Nemesis
by thisisforyou
Summary: AU. Doctor John Watson was the only man who ever challenged him, the only man who could defeat him and make him feel alive. It just goes to show - we need our enemies more than we need our friends. Sherlock/John. Inspired by the film, "Megamind".
1. Westminster Abbey

**A/N: 16/5/12: I haven't made any changes to the story. I've just taken out most of the Author notes and proofread a bit - published, if you like.**

**Anyone new to the story, this is a stereotypical melodrama AU in which John is your superhero and Sherlock, your super-villain. Enjoy. Please review. **

**-for you!**

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><p>People go to costume parties as Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson. They usually go <em>together<em>, which some people find strange. What's stranger, though, is that on the odd occasion where one goes alone, it's always as Holmes. No-one ever dresses up as Doctor Watson without Sherlock Holmes. It's an interesting statement on today's society, really.

Maybe it's because Doctor John H. Watson, M.D., is a normal sort of guy and there isn't much that distinguishes him from your average Joe Bloggs. Maybe it's because it's fun to be bad once in a while. Maybe it's because like it or not, and most people really don't, Sherlock Holmes is a lot better-looking than Doctor Watson. Or maybe it's because John Watson gets that look on his face when people idolise him, whereas Sherlock Holmes – if he's ever around, and you'd better hope he isn't – doesn't seem at all averse to it.

People generally expect Watson to be more… well, heroic. I mean, sure, there's the flying and the super strength and the lazer-beam eyes and all, and sure, he does use them from time to time (at least once a week) to save the lives of innocent Londoners, but he doesn't really seem the hero type. He doesn't stand in a melodramatic pose while adoring fans crowd around him; as soon as the day's been saved he slips off, and of course nobody sees him go.

People write stories about their battles. Sherlock Holmes is a genius – everyone knows it, even him – and while avid fans scribe elaborate, wild and clever plots and schemes for him the real thing is always more horrible and somehow more fantastic. But the fictions have their merit: sometimes Doctor Watson won't arrive on time and the brilliant villain will finally get his victory; sometimes Holmes will suffer a last-minute change of heart and set his hostages free, weeping; sometimes the famous pair will even down weapons and suddenly reach for each other in a convoluted, clumsy embrace.

Ludicrous and improbable as these scenarios are, even Sarah Sawyer, Watson's long-suffering girlfriend, has to admit there's something between the so-called superhero and his celebrated nemesis. Something in the way they're so attuned to each other that the good doctor always knows when Holmes is doing something especially devious, and that the self-professed detective has an impressive knack for guessing _exactly_ when to crash the party or knock down Big Ben – usually when Watson's in the middle of an important part of his day job at the local medical clinic, just about to vaccinate a baby or test someone for prostate cancer. Yes; the odd fanatic shippers that write horribly explicit scenes between the two in Holmes' darkened lair definitely have reason to be adored. John Watson despises the fandom; Sherlock Holmes, on the other hand, often plays with it in the middle of their confrontations, suddenly spouting lines from some of the more celebrated pieces that make Watson blush an angry red.

Today, though, neither man's heart was really in it. They were sort of just going through the motions; Holmes had kidnapped Sarah and tied her to a gargoyle on the roof of Westminster Abbey and Watson was on his way, dodging confused pigeons and street lamps as he wove his way to the heart of London.

Sherlock Holmes was making a big deal of rubbing his hands together in a villainous sort of way and Watson was looking his most heroic with a cardigan slung around his shoulders billowing out behind him like a cape, one fist raised as if to rent the air as he sped towards the Abbey. People rushed out into the street to watch their hero zoom by, cheering. Sherlock watched from where he'd rerouted the CCTV cameras to his laptop, waving the images teasingly in front of Sarah's face.

"He's coming for you, Miss Sawyer," he said teasingly, stroking a long white finger down her cheek. Sarah Sawyer shuddered slightly at his touch, but looked up at him with steely green eyes.

"Of course he is," she said determinedly. "He's coming to kick your skinny little butt, like always."

Sherlock Holmes chuckled and gazed keenly into the distance, but John Watson wasn't within his line of sight yet. "Not this time, Sarah," he spat, casting a disgusted look at her before resuming his former pose. "Not this time."

Sarah rolled her eyes. "Ooh, deja-vu," she said brightly, faking a shiver. "Is it me, or have I heard you say that a hundred times?"

Sherlock thought about this. Sarah had started dating Watson about three years ago… yes, a hundred times was a fairly safe bet. He ignored it; John Watson's silhouette had become visible over the rooftops of London. "Here he comes." Sarah laughed triumphantly, but Sherlock's villainous chuckle drowned her out. Before she could wonder what he had to laugh about, he was gone, jumped off the roof of Westminster Abbey on the opposite side to where her gargoyle was facing.

Sarah would have panicked if it was possible to panic with Doctor Watson in your line of sight. She couldn't see Holmes – had he really just _jumped off the roof?_ – and he'd seemed far too smug. A smug Sherlock Holmes was bad news, she knew that from three years of ruined dates and forgotten birthdays.

Doctor John H. Watson landed on the roof of the London landmark perhaps a little harder than necessary for dramatic effect; the whole Abbey shook and little chips of limestone jumped around his feet as he held the pose, catlike, on one knee with the other fist on the ground, for a few seconds to let the dust of his arrival settle. Then he got up and looked around, his gaze taking in Sarah, tied with Duct tape to a gargoyle, and the emptiness of the rest of the roof.

"Are you okay?" he asked his girlfriend, not moving towards her in case she was booby-trapped; he'd almost fallen for that trick once before.

"I'm fine," the woman replied calmly. She'd been kidnapped by Holmes perhaps too many times to still be frightened by it. And it was difficult to be frightened around John, with his aura of almost military _safeness_ and his blue-green eyes like the sea after a storm. "Holmes went that way – he saw you coming and just jumped off like a lunatic."

John Watson smiled kindly at her. "He's finally learnt that I can kick his arse from here to Cornwall," he remarked softly.

"I'm not booby-trapped or anything," she supplied, shifting uncomfortably around the cold limestone of the gargoyle. "You can untie me."

Watson could have disposed with the Duct tape with his eyes, but he knew Sarah liked to be touched, so he stepped towards her, letting his hero-face fall and showing her the John Watson he became when the cameras stopped flashing, kind and soft, and reached out to the end of the silver tape.

As soon as he was within arms' reach, the gargoyle stood up and closed its arms around the two of them, trapping John and Sarah in its stony embrace like something out of _Ghostbusters_. A laugh became audible over the wind, a deep rolling chuckle that both of them knew terribly well. Pressed up against the stone and Sarah's chest, Doctor Watson could see the joins in the stone – a well-constructed robot, then. He hadn't seen the lines before.

Sherlock Holmes stepped back onto the roof, his leather boots making the tiniest of tapping noises, his black high-collar cape flapping dramatically in the wind, still laughing his deep-throated laugh, as smoke began to pour from somewhere and paint the sky dark colours, obscuring the sun and sending flashes of blue lightning spinning around the two of them.

Sarah coughed; it was that sort of smoke they used in stage productions, and it smelled _awful_. Why did they both always have to be so _dramatic?_ She turned her head slightly until her nose was pressed against John's cheek. "Get us out of here," she whispered.

Had the gargoyle-robot been holding them slightly looser, she would have seen an odd expression take hold of her boyfriend's face, clouding his brave eyes and twisting that strong mouth. Even if she _had_ seen it, she wouldn't have recognised it; that sort of look _never_ appeared on that sort of face. But she couldn't see the face, and didn't see the look. All she saw was the muscles rippling in her doctor's bare arms as he pushed outwards, a move that would send a stronger stone than the lime of the Abbey flying in a million pieces.

But nothing happened. Sarah heard a grunt of exertion and _felt_ rather than saw the frown crease the other man's face as he redoubled his efforts: still nothing. Sherlock Holmes kept laughing. "Why don't you set your girlfriend free, Doctor?"

Sarah felt something hot brush her sleeve and the Duct tape trapping her to the statue fell away. She wriggled a few times until she managed to slip out between her boyfriend's legs and stagger free. Sherlock ignored her, and the arms of the gargoyle clamped down harder around the doctor's relatively small form. "Easy, Molly, we don't want to _hurt_ the good doctor, now, do we?" he purred to the statue. Watson looked around in alarm; Molly Hooper was Holmes' depressingly loyal assistant. Was she controlling the robot?

"Holmes, the day you manage to hurt me is a sad day for London," Watson remarked coolly. Holmes gave one of his infamous little half-smiles.

"D-day for London, I daresay," he parried back. The super-villain looked around in mock contemplation. "Could be today, you know."

Watson snorted in derision. "Sorry to bust your bubble, but I think you'll have to wait."

Sherlock Holmes took an involuntary step back in case the doctor was about to make a miraculous escape – that would be rather in keeping with the norm – but John Watson made a few half-hearted wriggles before desisting. Holmes chuckled. "So confident, Doctor Watson," he crooned, stepping right in close again, lowering his voice and his face until he was close enough to kiss the smaller man. "And yet you're trapped – why, a word from me could blow you to smithereens. If I can't hurt you, then why don't you just fly away with your girlfriend?"

John Watson lifted his storm-tossed eyes to meet Sarah's. Her eyes were asking the same question: why _hadn't_ he broken free? "Run, Sarah," he said clearly.

Sarah Sawyer was a brave woman. It was hard not to be, really, the number of times she'd been kidnapped, tossed off skyscrapers, covered in explosives, left in basements and all manner of other foul things at the hands of the man in front of her, paying no more attention to her than he would a spider. But there was a look in those eyes that said it was better to be alive and a little bit scared than stubbornly brave and dead, so she took a hesitant step back, and then another. Then she heard a mumbling from the doctor and couldn't help but stop to catch the rest of the action.

"I didn't quite catch that, Doctor Watson," Sherlock breathed, his mouth almost touching the trapped man's ear, his own pink shell a hair's breadth from Watson's lips. The doctor leaned his head back, that expression back on his face – but again, Sarah couldn't see it, because this time Sherlock was in the way.

"I said there must be silver in your gargoyle," Watson repeated, loud enough for Sarah to hear it too.

Sherlock Holmes stepped back. "Well, yeah," he said, puzzled. "There's silver wiring for the microphones. Why?"

The so-called hero closed his eyes in something akin to resignation. Sarah took another step back – what was going on? "Silver… weakens me," he explained wearily, struggling desperately again. Sherlock Holmes blinked like he couldn't believe what he was hearing.

"Wait, _what?_" Sarah Sawyer had heard enough – she wasn't sure what kind of game John was playing, but she didn't think it was funny anymore, and so she turned and ran across the roof to the side Holmes had jumped off. "You mean you're _actually_ trapped, and you can't get free?"

John Watson grunted in exertion again as he pushed fruitlessly against the arms of the gargoyle. Then he went limp, and nodded. Sherlock Holmes laughed in disbelieving triumph. "Well, then," he said silkily, the childlike excitement trembling in his voice, "I think it's time to say goodnight, Doctor Watson." And just like that, the villain turned on his heel and strode determinedly away. "Molly? Fire."

Sarah had almost reached the edge of the roof when the deafening explosion stopped her in her tracks and blew her off her feet. Sherlock, too, had fallen with his black cape over his face; he pushed it back in time to see a limestone hand hit the ground amid the peppery rattle of debris hitting the roof. A deep black scorch mark had been left on the pale stone, fingers of soot reaching out in all directions. Sherlock watched, stunned, as charred fragments of black-and-red-striped cardigan floated gently to rest.

Sarah Sawyer clambered to her feet, waiting, holding her breath – this was the part when John landed, laughing, pointing a mocking finger at how easily his nemesis had been fooled. But what landed with a sickening _crack_ at the fancied detective's feet was not laughing. Sarah screamed as she recognised it; even Sherlock, still blank-faced with shock, scrambled away from it hurriedly as it rolled to rest in front of him. It was scorched and cracked and broken in places, but it was still recognisably a skull.

The skull of Doctor John H. Watson.


	2. The Funeral of Doctor John H Watson

It was raining the day they conducted the funeral of Doctor John H. Watson. The empty casket – more a symbol than serving any real purpose, as there was no body – was carried through the soaked London streets by men dressed all in black with silent tears falling freely on the pavement, and the shrieking sobs of women who never knew him echoed through the back alleys, all the way to Baker Street.

It was quite insulting, really; those close to John Watson would know that he would have wanted this day to be a celebration of his life rather than a lamentation of his death. But the people of London were mourning more than the death of one small-ish ex-military doctor. They knew how much they had relied on their hero to protect them; they were mourning the death of their safety, and always looking over their shoulders for when evil would strike and no-one would be there to stop it.

All this sadness and fear shouldn't have bothered Sherlock Holmes. In fact, considering it was what he'd been working for the last few years, by rights he should have been quite happy about it. But his face was creased into an almost ugly (that pale face could never _actually_ be ugly) frown as he stared intently at the CCTV cameras he'd routed to his laptop, slumped in his pyjamas across the sofa of his lair at 221B Baker Street. In a professional way he'd had a lot of respect for the good doctor, and as Molly meekly pointed out he _had_ devoted a lot of time and energy to him.

But it wasn't that he _missed_ the doctor, good Lord no. _Feelings_ weren't something Sherlock had to worry about very often. It was just that he couldn't help thinking they were somehow disrespecting his memory by failing to remember him the way he would have wanted. He finally huffed a discontented sigh and roughly – but not _too_ roughly – tossed the laptop onto the armchair beside him and stood up. "Molly!" he called.

Almost _before_ he'd spoken, the small, docile-looking woman was beside him, looking up at him with a disgustingly canine expression. Her huge eyes widened as Sherlock stripped off his silk dressing gown in front of her eyes, reaching for his black cape. "Yes?" she stammered helplessly.

Sherlock looked down at her slightly disdainfully. "I think it's time we brightened up Doctor Watson's funeral."

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><p>Sarah Sawyer also disapproved slightly of the funeral arrangements, but she was too distressed to complain about it. She'd actually wanted a small private farewell, but the Prime Minister had insisted that all of London would have wanted to send their hero off in style. She walked behind the casket – why did they need a casket anyway? There was no body, that explosion had completely destroyed everything except shards of bone and a mostly intact skull, which Holmes had appropriated as some sort of twisted souvenir – flanked by two suited officials to ward off the swarms of TV journalists shoving microphones in her face. It was not how she had imagined her boyfriend's funeral.<p>

Actually, she _hadn't_ imagined her boyfriend's funeral. Why would she? He was John Watson.

_Was_ now being the operative word. God, she still couldn't believe it. She'd replayed those final few seconds in her mind so often – _silver._ Of all things, she would never have guessed his weakness would be a few silver wires in a microphone wiring a robot back to Molly Hooper. Neither had Holmes, she thought, remembering the look of shock on his face right before the gargoyle had exploded. _Wait, what?_ he'd said.

She'd expected – hell, all of London had expected – that the second Holmes realised he'd won he'd be off, running rampant through the streets and cackling madly like the Wicked Witch of the West. But no-one had seen hide or hair of him.

The procession came out into Piccadilly Square. The rain had done a great job of sobering the party, the mist and grey skies setting the perfect mourning scene. Sarah hated rain. She fingered the speech she'd written for the service. She didn't feel at all like giving it to these people; she could count on her fingers the number of them that John would have wanted there.

At the head of the crowd now swelling around the casket was Harry Watson. Sarah had only met her once, a bitter, jealous drunk who'd never been able to bear the fact that she was without any of John's abilities or personal charms. It had been hard to believe they came from the same family. Today Harry's cropped hair was standing up in wild directions and her eyes were bloodshot from tears and not alcohol. Sarah smiled bitterly despite herself. Nothing like death to make people remember they love you.

The Prime Minister stepped up to the podium to say a few meaningless words about how Doctor Watson had been the epitome of the London citizen, brave and selfless and on and on about how perfect he had been. _Had been._

Suddenly the sky went dark. Sarah's heart constricted slightly in her chest – she knew the signs. So, if the screams were any indication, did the rest of the Watson fan club. Suddenly people were running in every which direction, into houses if they were outside, out of houses if they were inside, then back the other way again. Sarah Sawyer stood stock still; there was nowhere she could run anyway. He knew where she lived.

Out of the tempest gently descended a blue balloon, buffeted this way and that by the wind, which had picked up, scattering the London litter in colourful tornadoes in the street corners. It was an oddly poetic gesture, Sarah thought, watching the Prime Minister cowering under his lectern. When it was about a foot from the lid of the closed casket, the balloon burst, and a single white rose fell with an inaudible _flump_ to rest with the mountain of flowers holding up the empty coffin.

Sarah blinked back tears. The black clouds gently lifted, but Piccadilly square was revealed to have lost about three-quarters of its crowd. She smiled as the Prime Minister hesitantly crawled out from under the lectern and resumed his speech as though nothing had happened. Maybe Sherlock Holmes wasn't so bad after all.

The casket exploded, throwing the PM off his feet, right off the platform and out of sight. Several more people screamed and fled the square. Sarah caught a glimpse through the smoke of a tall, thin figure standing by Piccadilly Fountain, arms folded, black collar flicking out around his ears. It struck her again how _delicate_ Holmes always looked, thin as a twig, his flowing cape billowing out around him in the leftover wind from the explosion of the government's stupid status symbol.

She took a step closer to him, suddenly not frightened of him but _furious_. How _dare_ he? How dare he ruin her John's funeral? Was it not enough that the funeral was happening because of him, not enough that he'd _won_? Why did he have to destroy _everything?_ She stumbled forwards, wanting to knock that stupid smug smile off his face.

It was three steps before she noticed that he was _not_ smiling, but rather staring at the spot where John Watson's casket had stood, now nothing but a scorch mark on the wooden platform horridly reminiscent of the one on the roof of Westminster Abbey, a hard look in his crystal eyes.

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><p>From there Westminster Abbey was the next to go, knocked to the ground by an army of scuttling robots, the rubble scattering to the winds and filling the cellars, left untouched under the ground. Then Hyde Park Fountain turned black and crumbled; the scuttling, spiderlike machines began to roam the streets, frightening children and confining people to their houses. The rain continued, coating the streets in a thick layer of slippery grime and darkening the sky until the world went grey. Sherlock watched the transformation from Baker Street until the quiet became too much to bear.<p>

Now he slumped languidly – somehow still managing to be graceful – in an office chair in the basement of the CCTV building, his black boots folded on the desk, his laptop resting on his knees, his brows beetled as he watched his robots swarm up the base of Big Ben. His fingers tapped innocuously against the plastic arm of the chair. Molly Hooper leaned against the desk near his feet, looking her usual nervous self. "Coffee?" she asked eventually.

Sherlock didn't look up. "Black, two sugars." Molly nodded; she knew how he liked his coffee, of course. He told her every time she offered, like it was possible for her to forget. She forgot a lot of things, but absolutely everything about Sherlock Holmes was burned into her brain like they'd been put there by a red-hot poker.

When she'd gone, Sherlock brought up the cameras around the abbey again and zoomed right in. There was a reason he hadn't destroyed the cellars. He'd never told anybody, but when he was a child there'd been one particular cellar that had once been the chapel of a hospital, turned into a records-room after the Dissolution, and he'd played there sometimes. He'd liked it because in places where the whitewash had been peeling there had been flashes of bright colour over the walls; when he'd grown old enough to experiment he'd created an agent that would clear the whitewash and not the paint underneath to find crude, haunting paintings of monsters and horrible suffering.

He'd asked his mother why, hypothetically speaking, there might be a painting of a monster with seven heads in a church, and she'd directed him to the book of Revelation in the Bible. He'd never been one for religion, but Revelation had excited him; after the monster with seven heads and ten horns he'd uncovered the seven angels with seven vials peering at him from the walls. It had been his place of refuge from his brother and the other people who mocked him and hated him.

"Sherlock, what are you doing to Big Ben?"

He didn't look around; he'd known the older man was standing in the doorway, inspecting the finial point of a long, black umbrella. The man, too, was long and black-clad in an impeccable three-piece suit. For some reason, he exuded more of an air of soft danger than the so-called super-villain he watched from the door. Instead, Sherlock rolled his eyes. "Bored," he muttered absently, tapping the feed from the Abbey cameras away and replacing them with the robot-covered landmark. The mechanical creatures were on their way back down now.

The tall man raised an eyebrow dangerously, but still Sherlock did not react. "I have tolerated your behaviour in the past because yourself and Doctor Watson provided mostly harmless entertainment and inspiration for the general public," he said silkily, his umbrella hitting the ground with a tap. "However, the somewhat unexpected death of the doctor has changed matters somewhat."

Sherlock's grey-blue-green eyes flicked up to the clock on the wall. One minute to twelve. He hitched up a smirk in reply to the other man's last comment. _Somewhat unexpected death... _did no-one have faith in him? "I do not want to hurt you, Sherlock," he continued, "but I may be forced to take action."

The younger man spun around on his chair, the soles of his boots hitting the floor with a slap. "Go on then," he challenged, his eyes blazing, closing his laptop and leaning forwards threateningly. "_Take action_, Mycroft. See if you can touch me."

Mycroft Holmes' thin lips tightened. "Just think what Mummy would say," he commented sadly. "It always upset her so when we disagreed."

Sherlock snorted. "_When_ we disagreed? Your valuing work over your family was what _upset_ her. And it doesn't matter now, does it? Mother is dead."

Anyone watching may not have thought those thin lips could constrict any thinner, but at these last three jabs they all but vanished. There was a long silence, broken only by the tapping of the umbrella on the stone floor. Sherlock opened his laptop again, smirking.

Big Ben chimed twelve; Sherlock started tapping furiously on the computer. Mycroft raised a languid eyebrow.

_Ding dong ding dong, dong ding dong – **BAM.**_

The clock tower blew up violently, eliciting screams from the multitude and destroying the CCTV camera Sherlock was watching from, filling the room with white noise. Sherlock smirked at his brother. "You were saying?" he said insouciantly.

Mycroft smiled, a tight, forced sneer that was somehow terrifying. "Think it over," he said quietly.

Then he was gone.


	3. Revelation

In the week after the funeral of Doctor John H. Watson, Sherlock Holmes spent an alarming amount of time talking to his skull.

He'd given it pride of place on his mantelpiece as a sort of trophy, to remind him that he'd finally beaten the doctor and block out the stack of plans he'd had to brush aside and fix to the mantel with a jacknife; blueprints for an Illiteracy beam and an elastic sort of a sack he'd hoped would be able to accommodate Watson's strength instead of withstanding it. He'd been proud of those plans. Now they didn't matter.

But instead the skull had provided a sort of _presence_ in the sitting room, and Sherlock had caught himself talking to it before he remembered whose skull it was. What's more, he'd been sure the skull was responding, providing the sort of almost-witty rebuttal that the doctor had always managed to throw at him. He missed that, the sort of back-and-forth repartee that fans had often mistaken for flirting.

He stood in front of the fire and fiddled with loose ends of the papers, idly examining pages of his messy handwriting, overlaid with Molly's neat script. They'd been such _brilliant_ plans. "All for you, _Doctor_," Sherlock said gently.

The skull, unsurprisingly, didn't reply. He looked at it for a few moments and it looked back, blankly. Was he imagining the sort of _bold_ look on its fine-boned face? He shook his own head quickly, looking back at the plans. Typhoon Cheese. That one was going to have been fun. "You would have loved this," he murmured to the skull. "I was going to reroute the pipes to Piccadilly Fountain and plug the melted cheese in instead. It would have made you laugh…"

He sighed, reached out a hand, and touched the smooth bone. "I miss you, Doctor Watson," he said quietly.

It came as a shock to hear himself say it. No regrets, that had been his mother's policy. You don't want to get to the grave thinking _I wish I'd done this,_ or _I wish I hadn't done that._ Well, he regretted this. He hadn't really meant to anyway; well, he _had_ meant to, but he hadn't seriously thought it would work. And it was true; he _missed_ Doctor Watson. He missed the sense of purpose that London's hero had given him, the fun he'd had thinking up new ways to defeat him. He missed that sort of warm, satisfied feeling in his stomach when he'd look up and see the lab coat-clad figure sailing through the air towards him. He missed the competition, the challenge. Missed, he supposed, the way he _knew_ Watson, and the doctor _knew_ him.

"Sherlock?" He spun around, almost knocking the doctor's skull off the mantelpiece. Molly stood behind him, looking politely puzzled, but not openly shocked. _Good_. She hadn't heard his declaration. "Um, if I'm interrupting…"

"No, no, Molly, don't be ridiculous." From anyone else those words would have been politeness. From Sherlock Holmes they were haughty, contemptuous, and somehow managed to be insulting.

"Okay," the girl said happily. She never had quite understood Sherlock and insults. Or maybe she had, and just chose not to care.

Either way, Sherlock couldn't quite stand it today. He'd just confessed to a _skull_ that he missed John Watson. He needed some air. "I'm going out," he said sharply. "I'll bring a takeaway back for dinner. Chinese okay?"

"Sure." Molly fiddled with her white lab coat nervously. "Um… I was wondering," she started, causing Sherlock to roll his eyes at her timid voice. Unfortunately, she noticed, and for some reason the gesture always seemed to make her bolder. "I was wondering if I could bring my boyfriend around for dinner some time? You wouldn't have to be here," she clarified quickly, "but if you wanted to, I'd like you to meet him."

Was it bad that he hadn't realised she was with anyone? "You didn't tell me you had a boyfriend," he said, trying to sound mildly affronted. She looked surprised.

"I didn't realise you wanted to know," she said apologetically. "It's a new development. He works in IT at St Bart's, I met him the other night when you wanted me to find you that sample of lung tissue from the morgue."

He suddenly felt a little guilty. He wasn't completely heartless, after all, and he wanted Molly to stick around. He smiled at her and gestured to the sofa. "Get him round tonight, if you like. Tell me more about him."

Looking incredibly surprised, Molly sat down. "Um… I'll ask him. There's not much more to know, I've told you what he does. He's about average height, I guess, brown hair, lovely chocolate eyes…" Her own hazel orbs glazed over. God, she was obviously almost as smitten over this guy as she was over Sherlock himself. "His name's Jim, I didn't say that, did I? He plays chess, he won a championship a few years back. He's a Professor. _Professor James Moriarty._ Isn't that impressive?"

"Mmn," Sherlock stated in absent enthusiasm. "Personal qualities?"

Molly was on a roll now and he didn't think he could have stopped her with a brick wall. "Well, obviously he's intelligent, to be a professor. And he's so courteous! He always holds the door open for me and pulls out my chair – the perfect gentleman. And he's so kind and caring and _selfless –_ he puts everyone else before himself. And _brave_! He's just… he's so perfect. I'm going to call him and invite him to dinner – thanks, Sherlock!" And just like that, practically mid-sentence, Molly Hooper jumped up and rushed out of the room.

Smart, courteous, kind, selfless, brave… Sherlock leaned back until the skull was in his eyeline. "Remind you of anyone?" he asked it idly. But the beginnings of an idea were beginning to form in his head.

Molly rushed back into the room. "He can come," she gabbled excitedly. "He says Chinese sounds lovely. Weren't you going somewhere, Sherlock?"

With one last look at the skull, he smiled a smug little smile to himself and swept out of the flat. Yes… Yes, he was going somewhere. There was somewhere he rather needed to be.

* * *

><p>Sherlock walked through the streets of London with a spiderlike robot on each side of him, growling in a doglike way at the few people that didn't shrink into doorways and alleys at the sight of the feared detective. He was never quite sure how he'd programmed them to be quite so possessive of him, but they made excellent guard dogs.<p>

Westminster Abbey was a decrepit pile of bricks and rubble. It was almost depressing, but Sherlock held it in; after all, he'd made it that way. The two robots buzzed calmly in front of him and pulled a section of the rubble aside to reveal the steps into the cellars.

He'd done some research on the abbey cellars after discovering the murals and found out that most of the rooms he'd played in were utilised as grain storage, but the one housing the incredible Apocalypse cycle had once been a chapter-house. It seemed a little strange, that people would go to pray in a chapel that served as a constant reminder of how futile life was and how badly it was all going to end up.

He loved it. The stairs had managed to mostly escape the wreckage, and Sherlock's leather boots padded gently down the stone ledges until he was in the chapter-house.

The vivid images assaulted his senses; the Great Whore on her seven-headed beast, the seven angels pouring bowls of sin on the desolate nonbelievers. Usually they filled him with the sort of feeling one needs to kidnap people and blow things up; today they just reinforced the futility of all those things without Doctor Watson.

He sat down on a loose piece of rubble and sighed.

It wasn't that he missed _John _per se, it was more that he missed the _idea_ of John. The idea that there was a Doctor John Watson out there who would be able to entertain him, and challenge him, and stop him if he needed it. If he looked out of the Baker Street window now he saw piles of rubble that had once been London's tourist landmarks. The city used to be a hive of activity, and that was what had attracted him to it; there was always something going on, a challenge for his intellect, a buzz of energy that could lift anyone who needed it. Now holidaymakers looked around in dismay and backed off to Cornwall. The activities and celebrations he'd so loved to sabotage had been cancelled because now there was no-one to stop him sabotaging them.

Defeating Watson had been his favourite game, a game he'd never intended to win so thoroughly. The gargoyle plot he'd planned more for presentation and amusement value than because he'd actually thought it might _work_. If he'd been prepared for the possibility of success he would have done something differently. The look on the doctor's face in the moment after the word 'fire' and before the explosion – Sherlock couldn't get it out of his head. It wasn't the look he'd wanted to see on that worn, kindly face at its moment of defeat.

Now he needed his intellect. He needed to fix things, to give London a bit of hope and himself a bit of occupation. And he had an idea how to go about it.

A spidery robot crawled tentatively over the rubble to push its head-facet into his hand like a cat wanting to be petted. He stroked it absently and it climbed onto his lap and dropped a piece of fabric onto his trousers.

He looked down at it. It was a charred piece of beige pearl-knitted wool from the sleeve of Doctor Watson's favourite jumper.

He rubbed it between his fingers, resisting the completely weird urge to rub it over his cheek, too, and looked down at the robot that had curled up on his lap and shut itself off. A smile played across Sherlock Holmes' angular face. He could do this.

There was a clatter from behind him as a piece of rubble was disturbed, and he jumped up and whipped around; the robot that had been asleep on his lap managed to switch itself on in time to realise what was happening and land on its feet. A second robot crawled over the rubble, beeping feebly at him. He sighed. "Time to go," he commanded.

The bots followed him all the way across London to St Bartholomew's teaching hospital. He frowned sternly at them at the door; they both let out rather pathetic mewling beeps, but sat quietly on the pavement, flanking the door. He wished sometimes they weren't quite so loyal; everyone always knew where he was.

The lab was deserted, which was strange given the time of day, but Sherlock didn't complain. He whipped out the piece of jumper and stuck it under a microscope. Oh, please, oh please oh please…

The fabric was hand-knitted, but he could tell that the first time he'd seen the doctor wearing it. Mother, he guessed. He didn't think Watson had had any living grandparents and the jumper was reasonably new. He found himself smiling at the way people's clothing so inherently reflected who they were; then caught himself in the act and stopped abruptly. Collapsing in a soppy heap over John Watson's fashion choices was _not_ a healthy move. He didn't care what clothes the man wore.

Focussing the scope in closer, he finally caught sight of what he'd wanted to see. Tiny flakes of skin from where the jumper had rubbed against him. Crowing triumphantly, he plucked it away and threw it into a ready bath of some viscous solution. This was it; this was it!

Twenty minutes later he stopped singing _London Bridge_ and held his vial of crystal-clear liquid up to the artificial light. Doctor Watson's DNA, specifically the genes that gave him his so-called superpowers. _And_ it was dinnertime. Could the day get any better?

He let the laugh bubble out of him in a slightly worrying way, stowed the vial carefully in his coat pocket and blasted the lab door out of the way for good measure.

It was time to have tea with Professor Moriarty.


	4. Tea with Moriarty

Molly's levels of agitation were apparently proportionate to the proximity of her latest squeeze. Sherlock had never had a chance to observe this before, having always _been_ the squeeze, but it was actually fascinating. Her inability to sit still had grown alarmingly in the ten minutes before her boyfriend was due at the flat, and when the doorbell had rung she had let out something that he couldn't describe as anything but a yelp and dashed down the stairs to open it.

Sherlock smiled amusedly to himself and went to get the Chinese out of the oven, where it had been warming. Jim had called to say that traffic was backed up and his cab was crawling through the streets; Sherlock had been in too good a mood to feel guilty for creating the traffic jam.

He placed the food on the table and looked up as Molly brought the young man through to the kitchen. Professor James Moriarty was of average height, with a not-unpleasing countenance. Whether he was dressed for work or not his clothes were semi-formal, a shirt and suit pants carefully arranged over his lean form, the suit-jacket hanging open with his hands in his pockets. Had Sherlock not seen him accessorised with his own Molly Hooper hanging off his arm, he would have said he was gay.

His face was arranged into a slightly nervous expression, a half-smile with worried eyes. Molly, too, looked nervous. Was he really that formidable? He supposed that was a good thing. "Professor Moriarty," he said in his most polite voice that somehow always managed to come out high-pitched and unnatural. "Nice to meet you."

"Jim, please," the other man replied, looking thoroughly flustered at being addressed by his title – was that not social protocol? Perhaps not when you're being introduced to your assistant's – the closest thing you had to a friend – boyfriend. "I've heard so much about you, Mr Holmes, Molly never stops talking about you."

Sherlock felt an irrational stab of possessiveness. _I'll bet_, he thought. Instead he smiled again and gestured towards the table. "Shall we? It's probably not as nice as it was fifteen minutes ago. Sorry about the traffic, it's most likely my fault."

Jim smiled, but Sherlock thought he saw a touch of defiance behind those dark eyes. Was that just wishful thinking? He continued to stare intently at the other man as they sat down at the table and began piling their plates. Eventually Molly kicked him gently under the table. He looked at her in surprise; she'd never dared do anything like that before. "Stop staring," she hissed. He definitely didn't imagine the small smile that spread across Jim's dark face this time.

So he'd not only wanted but _expected_ Sherlock to be looking at him. When he factored in the distinctly homosexual air the man had given off when he first arrived in the flat, he was forced to conclude that Jim was only using Molly to get to _him_.

Which was fantastic, because it showed that he was willing to use any means necessary to defeat him. And he didn't even have John's abilities yet! Sherlock narrowly prevented himself from rubbing his palms together in glee.

He had strategically manoeuvred the seating arrangements so that to get to the bathroom he had to pass the place filled by Jim; about halfway through the meal he excused himself while Jim and Molly were busy making googly eyes at each other in a faintly nauseating way. This Moriarty was a very convincing actor; all the better.

While he was distracted in this way Sherlock let his hand, the vial concealed in his sleeve, hover over the half-empty plate. Just enough of the liquid dribbled out onto the nazi goreng. Cackling delightfully inside, he floated off to the bathroom.

It should take all night to work. Jim Moriarty would wake up a hero.

* * *

><p>Mycroft Holmes sat in his cold office, tapping his umbrella on the carpeted floor and staring irritatedly at the screen in front of him. The office was cold not in the sense that it had no heating; great care was taken to ensure that a comfortable temperature was maintained at all times. But there was nothing <em>personal<em> in the office, no photographs or quotations on the walls, no clutter on the desk. Mycroft didn't work that way.

On the screen in front of him was a fairly decent view of 221B Baker Street, the slightly poky – in Mycroft's opinion, it was too homely and cluttered for his taste – flat that his brother had been working out of for the past few weeks. He was tutting at the apparently ordinary domestic scene in front of him; Sherlock chuckling idly as he passed a mostly-empty dish of beef in black-bean sauce down the kitchen table to his pathetic assistant Molly, her date between them roaring with laughter at some story Sherlock had just told.

He was tutting because not only was the whole affair distinctly out of character for his brother, but he'd seen the vial of colourless liquid that had been tipped surreptitiously over the other man's dinner while he wasn't watching and he knew it couldn't just serve as a practical joke. It wasn't laxative or chilli powder – for some reason, Sherlock was pretending very carefully to be fully supportive of Molly's new squeeze, and Mycroft didn't like it one bit. His brother had always coveted the fact that the Hooper girl only had eyes for him.

He'd looked the man up as soon as his buried microphones had picked up his name, but the results had been disappointing. Professor James Moriarty had no criminal record; in fact, he had no records at all. Absent from the books were the university and course with which he gained his title; no family or employment history, nothing. Just a name and a typically awful head-and-shoulders passport photo.

Had Jim Moriarty been a Professor of English Literature – a professor of anything at all – Mycroft would have been more than content. But not having those details readily available to someone with _his_ resources meant that someone was trying rather hard to keep them that way.

Mycroft needed a pawn. Sherlock needed to be controlled – his exploits with Westminster Abbey and Big Ben were unacceptable. But he couldn't be seen to do it himself; he needed someone to take on the hero mantle for him.

He pressed a key on the board in front of him and the picture on the screen changed; a bird's-eye view of an office the elemental opposite of his own. It looked as if a tornado of some kind had occurred in the filing cabinet; folders and papers and highlighters were scattered to the winds amid myriad empty Styrofoam cups. Distasteful as he found the mess, Mycroft couldn't help but view the man who occupied the office with a certain amount of strictly professional endearment. His continued hopeless efforts to track down and capture his brother were admirable, even if they were wasted. Well, perhaps it was time for a little help.

Mycroft picked up his desk phone and dialled a number. On the screen in front of him, a red light lit up on the corresponding phone and the ring echoed through both rooms. After three rings, a harassed-looking detective rushed into the room and picked it up. "Yeah?"

"Detective Inspector Lestrade," Mycroft acknowledged silkily.

"Yeah," the man repeated defiantly. "To whom am I speaking?" the government official twisted out a smile at the detective's crude attempt to imitate his manner.

"I wish to help you to bring Sherlock Holmes to justice," he replied easily. Lestrade sat down on his desk and, unfortunately, on a coffee cup that hadn't been quite emptied. Mycroft chuckled.

"Why?" the DI pursued, standing up again hurriedly and using a few probably important documents to stem the flow of tepid coffee across the desk.

"Because you look like you could use some help," Mycroft told him. "Your tissues are on the top of the filing cabinet," he added helpfully. He smiled again as Lestrade's eyes flickered to the tissue box before he froze.

"How do you know that?" He stood and grabbed the box nonetheless. "Are you watching me?"

"Do not pretend that is a difficult feat, Inspector," he said lightly. He pressed a few buttons that wiggled the security camera jovially until the DI noticed it. His eyes – an interesting sort of stormy blue colour, Mycroft noticed – widened in something akin to fear. "Don't worry. I want to help you."

Lestrade finished wiping his desk and his trousers and attempted the casual seating position again, with more success. "Who are you?"

"An interested party."

"Do I get a name?" The DI was talking directly at the camera now. For some reason it felt a lot more intimate, as though he were actually holding a conversation with the man. Mycroft resolved to introduce himself in person at a later date. Once he could be sure his identity would be kept secret.

In the meantime, he let the silence hang for a few seconds as he smirked. "No."

Lestrade sighed in frustration and ran a workman's hands through his grey hair. He glanced worriedly at the coffee-stained papers, no doubt realising how important they were. "Okay. So how do I know I can trust you, then? You could be Sherlock bloody Holmes for all I know."

Mycroft smiled again. "Relax, Inspector," he reassured. The Inspector didn't. "I am from the Government, and I am here to help."

The man on the other end of the phone chuckled wearily. "The most terrifying words in the English language," he commented wryly. Mycroft chuckled too.

"While I am pleased your knowledge of American historical figures is formidable, I'm afraid it won't help you in this case."

The two men grinned at each other. Well, Mycroft grinned at Lestrade, and Lestrade sent a brief, still-irritated grin at the security camera. The elder Holmes was surprised as a sort of warmth invaded his belly – was that normal? Maybe he was just hungry, it was rather late. "Okay," the detective conceded finally. "What do you want me to do?"

"Go home," Mycroft ordered. "Get some rest. I have a distinct feeling you're going to need it." He hung up the phone, but continued to watch the short, stocky DI as he sat and chuckled absently for a while, then turned his attentions to the coffee-stained papers with rueful abandon, only to discover that they were ruined. Finally, Detective Inspector Lestrade sighed, ran his hands through his hair again, and with one last mocking salute at the camera, switched off the lights behind him.

Mycroft flicked back to the camera in the Baker St kitchen. Sherlock was there alone now, and the sounds of Molly farewelling her boyfriend drifted back from downstairs. His brother was hunched in a chair at the kitchen table, his back to the camera, texting furiously.

The elder Holmes fiddled with the buttons until the camera started a slow zoom into the phone. Who was he texting? And what was he doing with Moriarty?

Suddenly Sherlock sat up and looked around, as if at a noise; he turned to face the shelf where the camera had been strategically hidden. Mycroft huffed out a sigh of annoyance as his brother took less than thirty seconds to locate the camera; he had to commission ones that made less noise when zooming. He felt the brief sense of vertigo and nausea as the camera hit the floor with a deafening _boom_, then the too-large image of Sherlock lifting his foot; then the feed blanked out to white noise.

He sat still for a few more seconds, processing this injustice, then snapped back into action with a sharp intake of breath. He pressed the intercom buzzer on his desk. "Jane!"

The woman who had recently taken to styling herself 'Jane Doe' – she had been worryingly excited at the prospect of being wiped off the books entirely and rendered nameless – knocked briefly and then entered without waiting for a reply. "Sir?"

He looked up at her from his desk. With that blazer giving her a vixen-like, almost spiky appearance, he sometimes felt that he and his brother should trade assistants. Except that Molly Hooper, without her undying devotion to Sherlock, would make a useless secretary. "Inform Silas that the surveillance at 221B Baker St has been compromised. And for goodness' sake, tell him to be _subtle_ this time. And arrange for reprints of the witness statements to the Big Ben incident to be sent to the office of Detective Inspector Lestrade at New Scotland Yard."

Jane nodded sharply. "Of course, sir." She turned and left. Mycroft spun his chair back around to face the static in front of him. Whatever Sherlock was doing, he obviously hadn't thought it through. And that could only mean bad news. He needed his eyes and ears on Sherlock, needed to find out this plan and its exit-strategy. Sherlock created every plan with a back-out option, a sort of fail-safe. He had to find out what it was for this new plan, because it looked like he might need it.

Maybe it was all harmless. But with Sherlock, he'd come to doubt it.


	5. Heroes Can be Made

Sherlock wasn't going to go in through the front door, but it was unlocked. Unlocked and yet the car was still in the garage and nobody had moved past the door since late last night; when he had come home, then, he hadn't locked the door. Everyone in London locked their doors, especially now evil was running rampant through the streets.

He'd been distracted, then. Sherlock smiled to himself as he pushed open the door. Significantly distracted.

The house was dark, the curtains still closed. He'd been sure to get there early, to make sure he was the first one that Jim Moriarty saw when he awoke. He'd probably be disoriented for a while, and if Sherlock could be the one to guide him, so much the better.

"Jim?" he called, speaking from the back of his throat, making his voice hoarse and gravelly to match the ash in his hair, the silicon wrinkles on his face and the stoop in his back held up by the staff he was carrying like some medieval wizard. "Jim?"

An answering groan came from the bedroom. Sherlock hesitated. He didn't know what the state of the bedroom or its occupant was like; he could be about to walk in on a naked man. And he wasn't entirely sure how much the DNA infusion would change him, either. He _certainly_ didn't want to walk in on a naked man bearing any physical resemblance to Doctor Watson.

Only – what would the doctor's body have looked like? Sherlock had only ever seen it covered in thick woollen jumpers, all form hidden beneath layers of pearl-stitch. Physically, John was so different from him that it would be an interesting study. He found himself distracted by the idea for a disturbing amount of time. He could walk into that room and actually be confronted with a living, _breathing_ Watson. That thought was… well, it was nice, whether the John Watson in his mind was naked or not, although –

Never mind. Sherlock limped up to the bedroom door and knocked. "Are you decent?"

The door opened violently in front of him and Jim Moriarty, awake, alert, and wielding a bedside lamp above his head like a Samurai sword, jumped out. "What do you want?" he shrieked in his faint Irish lilt. Sherlock noted, though with relief or disappointment he couldn't say, that the man was neither naked nor physically changed from what he had been last night.

"Peace, my child," Sherlock calmed, waving him away with a grandfatherly air. "How are you feeling?"

Jim wasn't buying any of it. "Who are you and how did you get in?"

"The door was unlocked," he pointed out. "And I am your guide. Your mentor. Your –"

"Yeah, all right," the professor cut in. "I spent too many years at university, I know all the synonyms. My guide in what?"

Sherlock gently manoeuvred himself past Jim and into the bedroom. "Come," he said in the same calm tone. "Sit."

Jim, albeit grudgingly, came and sat. Sherlock moved to the window and threw open the curtains, letting in a stream of sunlight. "How are you feeling?"

Jim rubbed his eyes against the light. "I have a headache and all my muscles feel funny," he said grumpily. "Now tell me what you're doing here or I'll call the police."

Sherlock knew most of the police. None of them were very effective. But he knew – or he hoped – that Jim could do much, much worse to him than the police. He drew an apple from the folds of the jersey-knit Joseph-style cloak he was wearing and held it out to the IT professional. "I will show you. Take this and squeeze it gently."

Jim, despite looking at him like he was the biggest lunatic in the world – a look Sherlock was more than used to – took the apple. Sherlock could see the tendons in his wrist constrict very slightly before the fruit exploded in his hand and he leapt back in shock. "Whoa! What was that!"

Sherlock tried a lopsided smile. "How familiar are you with Doctor John Watson?"

Jim blinked at him. "What, like the superhero? I knew who he was, obviously, I mean, everyone did. But I didn't _know_ him. He's dead, by the way, _grandpa_." He spat out the last word with contempt. Sherlock meant to laugh gently at that last comment, but for some reason the words caused some sort of spasm in his chest and the laugh was choked out.

"But there must always be a hero," he recovered smoothly. "I have sent you here to take up Doctor Watson's mantle. Evil has taken over London, and you, Professor Moriarty, must defeat it, and restore balance to the world."

Jim's chocolate eyes widened. "What? What do you mean, take up his mantle?"

Sherlock tried to refrain from rolling his eyes. Would he have to say _everything_ twice? This could be a long and irritating process. "You have been gifted with the same powers as Doctor Watson. They will enable you to resume his battle against the evil genius of Sherlock Holmes. You must –"

"Oh," he was interrupted softly. He looked at Jim, and was slightly alarmed to see the man hovering a few inches off the bed and staring at his feet with a kind of gloating pleasure in his eyes. He was a fast learner. Without warning, he shot a bolt of red light out of his eyes that severed the writing desk under the window clean in two. Sherlock jumped. "Oh, _impressive,_" Jim repeated.

Sherlock thought it was considerably more than impressive, actually. He'd expected it to take a few days before he could use his new powers this proficiently. "I can teach you how to harness the full extent of your power, Jim," he said warmly. Oh, this was going to be _fun._

Jim apparently thought so too; he suddenly let out a _whoop_ of pleasure and shot out of the window like a rocket, leaving the words 'oh, this is _perfect!__'_ behind him in a tangible stream. Sherlock rushed to the window to watch as the IT guy sped upwards and upwards. He sat back on the bed, disbelieving, and let out a tiny 'hm' of surprise. That had been quick.

There was a _thud_ as the professor came back to earth slightly harder than he had intended. Sherlock smiled again. Oh, good; there would still be _something_ for him to do in training his new hero. He made his way outside to where Jim hadn't got up, lying flat on the ground and looking part dazed, part exhilarated. Sherlock stood over him and offered him a hand. Jim just looked at it.

"Come on, get up," Sherlock said impatiently, trying to keep his voice even. The character he was playing, Jim's mentor, this character never got angry. Jim took the proffered hand and lifted himself to his feet, severely squashing Sherlock's hand in the process. "Ouch! Okay. First lesson – how _not_ to use your abilities if you don't want to so you don't break somebody's hand when you're trying to shake it."

Jim didn't appear to be listening; he had jumped up and was now employing Watson's super-speed to run rings around Sherlock, who was fast growing both dizzy and annoyed. "All right," he said eventually, "when you've calmed down, I'll be here."

A few minutes later, the bull-roaring noise created by the young man's movements stilled and Jim sat down carefully in front of him, crossing his legs, the picture of obedience. "Sorry, um… what do I call you?"

Sherlock smiled. "You may call me Father."

Jim's eyes widened, but then he seemed to cotton on to the fact that Sherlock had meant that in its armorial sense rather than its paternal one, and relaxed. "Okay, Father. I'm ready."

There was a sudden, highly perceptible and almost alarming change in the professor's manner. Gone was the excitable, sarcastic young man of a moment ago and in his place was the controlled, cultured youth Molly had brought home last night, as though he'd suddenly flicked a switch and become someone else. Sherlock suppressed a shudder. That was fine. Both versions of Jim Moriarty had been likeable, intelligent, although he suspected that this version might be easier to teach. "Right." He repressed the subconscious desire to steeple his fingers against his lips as he surveyed the younger man; that gesture would irrevocably give him away.

"You have been gifted with unfathomable power, James Moriarty. But with it comes responsibility. You must learn how to use it for good."

Something flickered across Jim's youthful face, but within a blink it was gone. "Of course," he agreed calmly. "Tell me what you want me to do."

* * *

><p>Sherlock burst back into 221B Baker Street in a flurry of cheerful activity. Molly looked up, surprised, as he took the stairs three at a time. "You're in a good mood today," she observed meekly. He lifted her off the couch and spun her around.<p>

"Oh, Molly!" he cried, setting her back on the floor, her dizziness, he knew, only half caused by the spinning. "I've finally got something to _do_ around here!"

She stuttered and sat down again promptly. "Oh," she said helplessly. "That's… good." He laughed at her and went to put the kettle on. When he came back she had put on her white lab-coat. "Well… well, I'd best get to Bart's," she stammered. "If you need anything, you know…"

"Of course," he replied cheerfully. "I'll text you."

When the door shut behind her he scooped up Doctor Watson's skull from the mantelpiece. "You see, old friend," he murmured to it lovingly. "It's perfect. Now things can go back to the way they were!" The skull just looked at him. He laughed again. "He's not _you_, Doctor, sure, but he'll do."

He gazed at the skull, held out like Yorick on his outstretched palm, for another moment before giving a final chuckle and sweeping out of the flat again.

He went back to Westminster Abbey. It was the final resting place of Doctor Watson, after all; it seemed fitting that _all_ of him should rest here. And it was the place Sherlock came to think anyway, and recently when thinking he'd found it beneficial to talk aloud _to_ the skull. It seemed logical.

He sat down on the same piece of roof and placed the skull reverently in front of him like some sort of shrine. "Time to put the past behind us, I think, Watson," he said briskly. There was a noise behind him, but he put it down to the robots he'd brought with him again and ignored it. "For what it's worth," he continued, "I'm sorry I blew you up. I didn't mean to. Well," he amended, "I _meant _to, but I didn't think it would really work. If I'd known it would kill you I don't think I would have done it. I just – _silver? _Really?" He sighed. "I can't help thinking, you know, in another life…"

He stood up abruptly. He was supposed to be meeting Jim again in half an hour. "Never mind. Time to move on. Only the future can –"

There was a bigger noise this time. Behind him, the sound of a pile of rubble being shifted, a noise too big and weighty to have been caused by a spindly-legged robot. Sherlock whirled around, ready to scream and spit, but what he saw took his breath away.

Behind him, frozen in a comical attitude like a rabbit caught in the beam of a headlight, was Doctor John Watson.


	6. An Unexpected Return

There was a long, shocked silence in which a single piece of limestone rattled its obnoxiously loud way from the top of the pile to the bottom; in which neither of the two men moved, both too shocked to so much as breathe; in which Sherlock Holmes' brain quickly accelerated to dangerous speeds and then shut down completely. Then Doctor Watson adjusted his footing, swallowed nervously, and tried a smile. "Hey."

Sherlock's lungs suddenly remembered that they had to suck air in and out, and expelled the breath they'd been holding sharply, his temporarily-disconnected brain not stopping his mouth forming the breath into words. "John…"

"Um… yeah," Watson said awkwardly. "Surprise."

Sherlock's legs were the next to admit defeat, and he sat down heavily on his piece of rubble. John Watson flinched. "But I… you're alive?" he stuttered helplessly, sounding like Molly at her very worst.

John sighed and sat down as well. "I'm alive," he agreed pensively. He suddenly flashed a grin. "That was a very moving farewell speech you gave, though, thanks for that." Sherlock kept up his indignant stammers for a good five minutes more, so it was up to John to fill in the conversation again. "In another life what?" he started tentatively. "You said you can't help thinking, in another life… what was going to be the end of that sentence?"

With a whirr, Sherlock's brain finally clicked back into action and instinct took over. Watson was alive. Watson was _here_. He had to do something before the other man did. Civilised conversations had never been their strong point. "It doesn't matter," he said coldly. "How the _hell_ are you still alive? And why did you let me just take over if you were still out there?"

Something in the doctor's face closed off quickly. "It doesn't matter," he mimicked. Sherlock scowled. His hands reached around to the pair of silver handcuffs in his back pocket – a fail-safe in case Jim reacted badly. Having them under his fingertips was comforting. He didn't particularly want _two_ heroes after him – he'd never get out of the penitentiary system. He looked up at John with determination, but the doctor wouldn't meet his eyes. "I won't stop you anymore," he said in the smallest voice Sherlock had ever heard him use. It almost stopped him in his tracks – _why, _Doctor? _Why_ won't you stop me? How can you not know I _want_ you to? With those thoughts spinning in his mind was a complete rage at the sheer _irresponsibility _and _selfishness_ of the Doctor's actions. All of London had suffered – _Sherlock_ had suffered because he was too cowardly to admit he was still alive.

Quick as a blink, he jumped up and clamped the handcuffs around the doctor's wrists before he had a chance to react. Watson blinked down at them blankly. "Come on, then, _Doctor,_" Sherlock spat, putting as much contempt into the title as he could. "You're a _hero_, you know how this works. You have to come with me."

If he noticed the tiny smile that crept across the doctor's kindly face as Sherlock led him away, he dismissed it quickly, instead yanking on the chain between the cuffs the way an agility trainer leads a troublesome dog. If the smile on Doctor Watson's face then grew more pronounced, Sherlock didn't notice because he was facing the other way.

He sent a text to Molly as he dragged John back up the steps. _Silver wiring. Upstairs bedroom. Urgent. SH_

"So where are we going?" Watson asked resignedly as he trotted behind Sherlock. The latter shot him a rather vicious look.

"I'd just begun to get accustomed to your absence," he replied snottily. "I can't have you begin to defeat me again. I know your weakness now, Doctor Watson, and I do intend to make use of it."

The good doctor rolled his eyes and went along with it as Sherlock ducked down an alley to avoid the general public seeing them. The rest of the journey to Baker Street continued in much the same way: with rapid detours into alleyways and frequent stops to spray passers-by with a chemical solution impairing short-term memory. Finally, though, they managed to get inside and up the stairs.

"Oh, Sherlock!" Molly was inside, bent over one of his experiments on the table. "This one had started to eat through the test tube so I was – Oh, my God. That's –"

Without thinking, Sherlock sprayed her with the solution and rushed the doctor up the stairs. John giggled, the self-professed detective's hand on the small of his back pushing him upwards. "What was that?" he asked conspiratorially.

Sherlock wasn't quite sure. He knew very strongly that he did not want Molly to know that John wasn't dead, but he didn't quite know _why_ he didn't want her to find out. "No-one can know you're alive – isn't that why you were hiding in the Abbey cellars, Doctor?"

John's giggle was more infuriating the second time. "So that makes me your dirty little secret, right?" The push that sent him flying into the upstairs bedroom was perhaps a little harder than necessary, but it was nothing the so-called superhero couldn't take. He landed right in the pile of silver wiring that Molly had saved from the gargoyle plans. This time Sherlock definitely noticed the look on his face – amusement. What on earth was so funny?

"Shut up," he said instead, and busily started to bind the doctor's wrists and ankles and eventually his entire body with the wires until he could barely move. John wriggled around experimentally, realised he was defeated, and smiled wolfishly. Sherlock grinned back.

"I'm sure this scene's been done before. People have written this – what happens next?" Sherlock knew very well. The line Watson had just said had come out of his own lips many times before. "Oh, yes," the doctor continued. "You confess your undying attraction to me and we… what's the phrase? _Go at it_ on the floor?"

He fully recognised the irony of the role-reversal here. He finally had the upper hand, and so it was John who was making the flippant references to their adult fanfiction community. But Sherlock was never one to accept jibes like that. "Well, if you insist, Doctor Watson," he offered casually. The doctor's face contorted.

"I might pass, thanks, Holmes. I'm a little tied up at the moment."

Sherlock snorted. The world of bondage jokes was open to him and he'd chosen _that_. "Oops. I guess that would be my fault."

John wriggled again. "Easy enough to fix," he pointed out hopefully. He was rewarded with a thin-lipped smile and a bored glance at his watch.

"Sadly, I have a prior engagement. We'll continue this later." He stood up and made to leave, theatrically turning back at the last minute. "Don't go anywhere," he teased.

John Watson smiled wryly. "Unfortunately I am _bound_ by my duty," he said in a languid, sarcastic voice the detective had only heard once or twice before. Was it him, or was the doctor a _lot_ more relaxed about this turn of events than he'd ever been before it?

Sherlock couldn't stop the smile spreading across his face as he left.

* * *

><p>Detective Inspector Lestrade had had another bad day. Despite going home earlier than he had in weeks to try and get some much-needed sleep, his flat was within earshot of the squeaky sort of noise Hyde Park fountain had started making since its dissolution, a constant reminder of why he should have been at work.<p>

So he'd come in early again to find that most of his team had been having the same problem. Now he sat at his desk, flicking through the Sherlock Holmes hotline emails of potential sightings. Holmes didn't bother to hide his whereabouts most of the time, so the hotline was mostly pointless, but it gave the public the sense that the police were doing something.

He hadn't stopped thinking about the man who had called him. He had seemed so _confident_, and while he couldn't entirely trust him – after all, fooling people over the phone was too easy nowadays, and this would be exactly the kind of thing Holmes would find amusing – the voice had been comforting, soft and refined and elegant.

_I am from the government, and I am here to help._ Ronald Reagan had said that those were the most terrifying words in the English language, but for some reason they'd been what he'd needed to hear.

He leaned back in his chair and downed the last of his third coffee of the morning and smiled slightly, remembering his mishap of last night. The first thing he'd seen when he walked into his office that morning had been the two gifts on his desk. The first was a new, pristine copy of the witness statements he'd poured coffee all over in an official-looking manila file. The second had been a brand new wastepaper bin, and a note. He wasn't sure what had happened to his old wastepaper bin, although he suspected someone else had snaffled it. He had picked up the note with some amusement.

_For empty or almost-empty coffee cups. To prevent a repeat of last night. –M_

Lestrade had spent about ten minutes wondering whether he was in a genderbent Bond film and what the M could stand for. Then Sgt. Donovan had knocked on the door and he'd snapped out of it. "New sighting letters, sir," she'd said clinically, barely looking at him as she dumped them on his desk. When she finally _did_ look at him he tried to wipe the goofy smile off his face, but in vain. She looked from his face to the note in his hands to the wastepaper bin on the desk. Then she smiled. "Secret admirer, Inspector?"

He'd given her a rather immature glare, but truth was he had no idea how far off she was. He didn't have a clue who 'M' was except that he claimed he could help them to bring Holmes to justice. And God knows they needed help with that. "Maybe a miracle," he said wryly. Then he looked back down at the paper, his smile broadening. "Miracle Man."

In his clinical office on the other side of London, in front of his laptop still broadcasting the live CCTV feed of the office, Mycroft Holmes' own smile became evident.

* * *

><p>Jim was artfully attempting to burn his name into the warehouse floor when Sherlock arrived, carefully concealing the panting breaths that would betray the speed with which he had run to the meeting-place. The Father always arrived exactly on time, he'd told himself that at the start; but he hadn't expected to have anything else to do.<p>

Once again, he'd failed to account for John Watson. Even when he'd been dead the man hadn't stopped surprising him. He'd just started to get used to the fact that he was going to have to replace him forever and attempt to forget the times when the world had been perfect. And now he was back.

The young IT professional looked up as Sherlock entered the warehouse. "Father," he greeted gently. Sherlock took a moment to marvel at the speed with which Jim was mastering his abilities. What was he going to do with him? Now that Watson was back he was a bit superfluous, but it seemed wrong to just defuse the experiment and turn him back to his original state, his previous life. Only… John's words in the Abbey cellar came back to him. _I won't stop you anymore_.

"Mastering the technique, I see?" he commented instead, indicating the signature on the concrete floor. Jim smiled sheepishly.

"Sorry. I was early. Why did we have to meet in this dump?"

Sherlock, having already explained the reasons for the meeting-place, rolled his eyes in irritation. "It would be undesirable for Sherlock Holmes to learn of your abilities before you were able to fully control and utilise them."

He was slightly uneasy about the level of disinterest he suddenly had in his creation. He _had_ to follow through with this plan. Wasn't this what he'd wanted, for things to go back to normal, to have someone to _fight_, someone to play the _role_ that Watson had played for so many years? Well, the doctor himself didn't want to play that role anymore. So why did Sherlock want so badly to ditch his student and run back to John?

"Oh, of course," Jim replied.

Sherlock, with difficulty, wrenched his mind away from John trussed up like a Christmas turkey covered in tinsel in the spare bedroom at Baker Street and back to Jim waiting patiently for his instruction. "You seem to be gaining an extensive level of control with the laser sight," he remarked. _Focus._ "Explain to me how you use it."

The 'lesson' crawled by with all the impertinent speed of someone who knows you're impatient and so deliberately slows down. Were he not fastidiously playing the part of the exceedingly calm Father he would be fidgeting incessantly. Silver or not, that wiring wouldn't hold the doctor forever, and he still had to create a better option before he went back to Baker Street.

Finally he stood up, careful to lean heavily on his staff and show excessive labour in the movements. "I think that's enough for today," he said gently. Jim looked at his watch and frowned.

"Thank you," he said. "I'm supposed to be having dinner with someone at six."

Sherlock smiled, feigning interest. "A woman? Someone special?"

Jim grinned back. "Molly. My girlfriend."

Sherlock nodded. Good. Molly would be out of the house that night. He would have hours in which to sort out the situation with John. "Good," he said in a friendly manner. "Romance is very inspiring." He ignored the twisted and slightly juvenile smile the remark elicited. "We'll meet here the same time tomorrow. Wear black; we'll work on flight." Jim's face brightened considerably and for a moment Sherlock was jealous. He'd always wanted to be able to fly like John Watson.

As a back-up plan in case the experiment with Jim went wrong, Sherlock had been carefully stockpiling silver in a disused basement across the street from St Bart's. That was here he headed now, discarding the Joseph cloak and wrinkles carefully behind a dustbin outside the warehouse and whistling for his robot escort, who quickly draped his usual black cape over his shoulders. He shrugged into the high collar; the London winds were high for the time of year. Even the weather had become miserable since he'd taken over. Now it would soon be fixed.

Inside the basement, lit by the soft glow of the robots, he looked around, instinctively steepling his fingers under his chin as he thought what to do. He gestured to the bots, cosying faithfully up to his legs. "You," he commanded.

Comically, they looked at each other as though attempting to discern which of them was meant by 'you'. There was a slight smile on his face as he rolled his eyes. "Either one," he clarified. The looks did not change. He sighed exasperatedly. They were cute, sure, but they could be a right pain. "_Someone_ go get reinforcements. And a smelting gun."


	7. Dinner?

Half an hour later he was triumphantly marching with a swarm of robots behind him back to Baker Street, his solution carefully concealed. He kicked the door open and let the army of bots swarm up the stairs like rats, listening to the sounds of Molly cooing to them as they reached the living room. He looked at his watch. It was half-five. Shouldn't she be going?

He said as much when he walked in. "Don't you have a date, Molly?" She looked up from where ten robots at once were attempting to crawl onto her lap.

"Six, wasn't it?" she said happily, looking at the clock on the mantel. Then she frowned. "How did you know?"

Oops. He cast a glance around the house and up and down her person, looking for replacement evidence. "Your top is showing an unusual amount of cleavage," he covered smoothly. "You weren't wearing those clothes when I left earlier. I suggest you ditch the lab coat, though."

She grinned nervously, hitching her shirt up over her chest self-consciously. "Yeah, thanks for that. Well, I'll just…"

"Please do," he said, perhaps too quickly. She didn't notice, instead skipping downstairs to 221C. He let out a shaky breath and jerked his head at the stairs. Beeping happily, the robots followed his commands, unfolding the strands of silver in their little tentacle-y feet.

When he opened the door, Watson had moved; he was sitting up against the bed, still held rigid by the silver wiring, looking thoroughly bored. Well, he'd best get used to it. As he entered the room, the robots immediately swarmed to the windows and started lacing them with silver thread in a neatly-constructed net to keep the doctor in. John watched them in consternation. His blue-green eyes, however, quickly flicked back to Sherlock's.

"You know, Holmes, superpowers and all, I'm still essentially human."

Aside from not being quite sure where this comment was leading, Sherlock knew it was wrong. He didn't know what John was, but he definitely couldn't have gained his abilities from being _human_. "Untrue. Your point being?"

John waved away the 'untrue' part of the statement. "There are certain bodily functions that even I am not exempt from, that make staying tied up in one room all day rather uncomfortable."

Oh. "Well, you can hold onto your bladder for five minutes more. You know what the Brainbots are doing?" he asked snidely. Watson looked around and smiled slightly.

"They're coating the walls with silver. Very clever."

"I'm always clever," Sherlock replied automatically. "As soon as they're finished with the ensuite I'll untie you. Had a good day, Doctor?"

Watson chuckled. "Very relaxing, thank you. I've done absolutely nothing all day – I've barely even moved."

"Many things you were in life, Doctor Watson," Sherlock quipped, grinning, "but never lazy."

"Yeah, well," John replied, an odd sort of look in his face. "Now I'm dead, aren't I? So things are different. I'm not _tied_."

Sherlock's brain jarred slightly at the recurrence of the pun and he shot an incredulous glance at the doctor. "Really? 'Tied'? Right. I'm untying you so the bondage cracks will stop."

The bots had finished, luckily, so Sherlock gave them the nod and they all rushed at Watson, tugging at the wiring and pulling his cocoon away. John stood up, shook a last bot off his leg and strode with as much dignity as a man with stiff muscles and a very full bladder can possibly manage into the bathroom.

Sherlock assumed the doctor's former position at the foot of the bed, let three of the robots cuddle up to him and broke up a squabble among the rest of them as they all tried to crowd in. "Go," he told them. Five, including the three on his lap and the two that had come the closest to joining them, disobeyed. He sighed, but ignored them. Watson smirked at them when he came back from the loo. Sherlock tried to look haughty, but discovered that it's difficult with five exceptionally possessive robots competing for your attention and gave up. John sat down cross-legged opposite him.

"So how long are you going to keep me here?" he asked idly. One of the robots began eyeing him tentatively.

Um. Sherlock hadn't really thought that one through. "As long as it takes," he replied evasively. John accepted that that meant _I don't know _and nodded reasonably. Sherlock narrowed his eyes. "Sarah doesn't know, does she," he stated.

Doctor Watson sighed. "Sarah doesn't know." He hugged his knees up to his chest, looking horribly vulnerable. "No-one does. Except you." At this gesture of sadness, the quivering robot that had been eyeing him jumped up and ran to him, pressing itself into his chest like a cat. John jumped, staring at it, totally at a loss as to what to do. Sherlock chuckled.

"We modelled them on domestic animals for design reasons," he explained. "They got a few extra characteristics. Dogged loyalty, a catlike need to be petted, that kind of thing. Most of the time they're not exactly fearsome." John smiled broadly as he descended a hand to pat the bot, which started beeping rapidly at the touch and pressing into his hand. Sherlock fought back the desire to laugh as the other bot that had missed out on his own lap also diverted to John's. The doctor chucked. "So why doesn't she know?" Sherlock recalled.

Something closed off in the face opposite him and he suddenly remembered that he and John were enemies. _Nemeses. _They weren't friends. "Because I didn't tell her," Watson said sharply. Sherlock wanted to apologise, but the relationship he'd always held with the doctor demanded he curl his lip insouciantly instead.

"Oh, dear," he tutted. "Crisis in the Watson household.

"I wouldn't know," Watson quipped back. "I haven't been there in a while. Why haven't _you_ told _Molly_ I'm alive?"

"Because she's not my girlfriend," Sherlock retorted, knowing that it didn't answer the question. Why hadn't he told Molly John was alive? Well, if he was completely honest, because there was a part of him that wanted the doctor all to himself.

John feigned surprise. "What? You mean all the stories are wrong?" Sherlock rolled her eyes. The few stories that flourished on the internet featuring himself and Molly were _always_ awful. "So who_ is _your girlfriend?"

Trying not to read anything into the question, he instead met the doctor's blue-green eyes disgustedly. "Why do I _need_ a girlfriend?"

John held his hands up in mock-surrender. "That's all right," he said. "I don't have one either, anymore." To Sherlock's surprise, he didn't look sad about the development at all.

"John, um…" he met the doctor's eyes again, a wry smile fighting for possession of his lips. "I think you should know that I consider myself married to my work, and… while I'm, um, _flattered_ by your interest, I'm really not looking for anything like that at the moment…"

Doctor Watson picked up the closest thing to hand – a wrench, as it happened – and threw it at him. He caught it deftly, grinning. "Dinner?"

"Starving." Sherlock nodded briskly and left the room. He wasn't hungry himself, but of course Molly had left some of last night's pasta in the fridge, so he reheated it and brought it up. "Where _is _Molly?" John asked as he dug in.

"On a date," Sherlock shrugged, unable to keep the note of disdain out of his voice. Watson swallowed, looking at him curiously.

"You really _aren't_ interested in any of that, are you?" he asked, apparently surprised.

Sherlock frowned. "Should I be?"

"Most people are."

He gave a _tsk_ of contempt. "Most people," he repeated disdainfully. Watson grinned through a mouthful of food.

"They're not all bad, you know," he scolded.

"All evidence to the contrary." The doctor rolled his eyes, but didn't dispute the point. Sherlock smiled triumphantly.

Finally, John put aside his plate. "So you're just going to leave me in here, with nothing to do, for an indefinite period of time and no company? How long do you think you can nick food out of the fridge without Molly noticing?"

Sherlock frowned. "She'll just think I've started eating. And I can get you a book, if you like. Or a laptop."

John lifted an incredulous eyebrow. "A laptop?"

Sherlock nodded, standing up. "I'll have to modify the network settings so you can't use it to contact anyone, of course, but that shouldn't take long." The doctor looked mildly surprised. "What? I wouldn't want to deprive you of your fanfiction supply."

John grinned. "Ooh, you flirt," he scolded.

Sherlock smirked at shut the door behind him, unable to keep the smirk from spreading wider as the doctor left his sight. Why could Watson make him smile like this? He _never_ smiled. Perhaps it was good that he was so close; it seemed further research on the matter was necessary.


	8. Hellos and Goodbyes

Lestrade thought things were definitely looking up. Okay, sure, if push came to shove he wasn't actually much closer to _capturing_ Sherlock Holmes, but he was a lot more cheerful anyway. In the last week he'd gained himself a warrant to search and secure Westminster Abbey, the death-place of John Watson. So far it had yielded nothing suspicious except a single skull, which Sally was adamant belonged to the doctor, but they couldn't be sure. His next target was a warrant to search 221 Baker Street, which was where Holmes was rumoured to have taken up residence. Being an actual habited apartment, however, the government were taking longer on this one.

There was a knock on the door; Sally poked her head around and he tried to look as though he hadn't been frowning at the three Post-It notes with gentle, flowing script in front of him. She hadn't stopped teasing him about his Miracle Man, although her teases had stopped being vindictive four days ago when they'd found the signed search warrant on his desk, a Post-It stuck to the top page bearing the note _This should speed things up. M._

Yes. He was definitely a miracle. Sally's dark eyes flickered to the Post-Its and back up again, a knowing smirk adorning her face. "Don't daydream of your prince too long, sir," she said wryly. "There's a couple of people here say they want to help – right melodramatic pair. Shall I send them in?"

Lestrade sighed and swept the squares of yellow paper away with just enough care to make sure that they landed safely in a drawer. "Thank you, Sergeant Donovan," he said cheerfully. She grinned back and flung the door open.

In the doorway was a young man of around twenty, dark, with distinctly Irish eyes complimented by his black suit, looking confidently accomplished. Beside him limped an old man, his hair splattered with grey, back bent, a twisted staff holding him up, covered in a faded multi-coloured cloak. Melodramatic was definitely the word. Lestrade felt his mood, which had lifted at the hope of a new lead, sink right back to his stomach. "So," he said shortly. "You two want to help, then?"

The young man looked at the older one uncertainly, who nodded encouragingly. "Er… yes," the youngster said. "I want to help you bring Sherlock Holmes to justice."

"And how do you think you're going to do that?" he asked, trying not to get irritated.

The young man smiled boldly. "The way John Watson did," he replied. Lestrade started.

"What, like with superpowers and stuff? Please. Don't waste my time."

The old man edged his way into the chair opposite his desk. "Inspector, please," he croaked gently, his voice rough and weak. "You need to listen to what Jim has to say."

The DI narrowed his eyes at the old man. Where did he _come_ from? He looked like he'd been living as a hermit up a mountain somewhere for most of his life. Then he turned his eyes on the younger man. "So you're telling me you have superpowers?" he asked incredulously.

Jim smiled, and it was _then_, stupidly, that Lestrade noticed his position; he, too, had sat down, but there was only one chair. The young man's feet were dangling several inches from the threadbare beige carpet. His chin hit the desk. "Oh, my God." The youngster's smile became a self-satisfied smirk, while the older man began to look irritated.

"All right, Jim, you've proved your point. Inspector Lestrade, you need our help."

He couldn't really argue with that. John Watson had been the only thing that could keep Holmes under control. "Yes, I do," he demurred bleakly. "What do you want?"

It was, perhaps unsurprisingly, the old man who answered. "You are currently attempting to procure a warrant to search 221 Baker Street," he acknowledged. The DI opened his mouth to ask how he knew that, but was cut off. "We ask you to withhold that search, Inspector. Innocent people live in that building. We ask that you step back and let Jim deal with Holmes, the way Doctor Watson used to."

The fact that he'd applied for a warrant to search Baker Street was classified knowledge. He only knew one person who could get that sort of information. Well, _knew_ here being used in the loosest term possible. He leaned forwards in his chair. "Are you… have you contacted me before?" he asked. The voice wasn't the same at all, he admitted, but there was something in the old man's manner…

He frowned. "Not before today, Inspector. Please try to concentrate."

Lestrade shook himself mentally. "Of course not. Sorry. So what's your plan?"

Jim looked at his companion. "Jim will capture Holmes and bring him here," the old man supplied. "From there, he's your responsibility."

"He'll escape," Lestrade told them dully. "They've tried holding him everywhere between here and the ADMAX in Florence. The facilities to hold him just don't exist."

"Then I'll catch him again," the young man cut in determinedly. "Just like Watson used to. I'll fix London and then I'll keep it fixed."

The DI held his steely gaze for a few seconds. Well, he was desperate. "All right," he said finally. The two smiled smugly at him. "Who are you?" he asked after a longer pause.

"We're people who can help," the old man said mysteriously. Lestrade rolled his eyes; he'd been hearing a lot of that.

"I need names."

The old man smiled. "No you don't, Inspector. You don't need mine; you'd forget it as soon as I left the room. But his…" he looked at the younger man with pride evident on his wrinkled features. Father and son? "His name I think you'll remember for a long time."

Why did everyone associated with Sherlock Holmes have to be so bloody melodramatic? It was like they were living in a whole separate universe.

"His name is Jim Moriarty."

* * *

><p>Sherlock shut the door of DI Lestrade's office behind him and patted Jim on the back. "I think that went well," he said cheerily. "Don't you?"<p>

Jim rolled his eyes. "Yes, Father," he agreed in his wry Irish lilt. "Not that he could have refused my help."

"It's always nice to let the police pretend they're halfway competent," Sherlock scolded, feeling ever-so-slightly hypocritical. Were he ever given the opportunity to work _with_ the police instead of against them, he certainly wouldn't miss an opportunity to slap them in the face with their own stupidity. But then he had never pretended – _would_ never pretend to be a hero.

Jim snorted. "Yeah, right."

"Yes, they are pretty dire, aren't they," he agreed absently. The two of them stepped out into the street and looked back at Scotland Yard. Then Sherlock looked at Jim. "Tomorrow you fight Sherlock Holmes," he told the boy. "Tomorrow you no longer need me to teach you."

Jim looked back at him and some kind of odd emotion – was that _pride_ in his pupil_? _– shot through his chest. "Father," he said softly. "I'm ready for this."

"I know you are, Jim," he replied, lifting a wizened hand to the boy's shoulder. "You'll make me proud, I know it. But now we must say farewell." He dropped the hand and bowed his head dramatically. "We will never meet again."

To his surprise, Jim pulled him into a clumsy, young-man's hug. "Thank you, Father," he said. Sherlock, unused to the situation, patted him awkwardly on the back.

"No, Professor Moriarty," he said once the boy had released him. "Thank _you_. Thank you for taking the huge mantle I thrust upon your shoulders. Thank you for learning what I had to teach. Thank you for being a hero." He patted Jim on the back again. "Now get some rest. Tomorrow is a big day for you."

If the boy's smile twisted at the word 'hero' into something slightly malicious and unhealthy, Sherlock didn't notice as he turned to deliver his last melodramatic line.

"Tomorrow you save the world."

* * *

><p>DI Lestrade sat at his desk, unmoved, still staring at the spot where Jim Moriarty had shut the door after himself.<p>

The man had flown. He had actually bloody _levitated _himself off the floor of Lestrade's disgustingly beige carpet, the way only John Watson had ever done before in history.

Bloody hell. The kid had seemed nice enough; he could be the miracle that Scotland Yard really, _really_ needed.

_Miracle_. The word triggered his brain – not that he'd forgotten about his phonecaller, of course not. The first thought that had gone through his head at hearing the boy's name was that Moriarty started with M. And yet… their voices had been so different. Was there any way that young man could possibly emulate that elegant, silky voice over the phone?

On cue, the chrome desk-phone trilled mindlessly at him. He smiled; his Miracle had called him every day for the past week and a half. It was later than he usually called, and the DI had almost begun to think he wouldn't call at all.

"Lestrade," he answered, just in case it wasn't him.

"Inspector," came the languid reply. Lestrade felt himself relax and wondered, not for the first time, why this silvery voice had such a calming effect on him.

"You're late, Miracle Man. I was starting to think you weren't going to call."

He could hear the smile in the refined voice. "I'm sorry, Inspector," it said. "Busy day."

Lestrade chuckled. "I know what you mean," he said wryly. "If you had any idea what I've just seen…"

A chuckle returned down the line, dry and slow. "I have _every_ idea what you've just seen, Inspector," he replied languidly. "I have been watching the train of events surrounding our young Professor Moriarty with some interest for several days."

Of course. Lestrade glanced up at the camera in the corner. "I thought he might be you," he admitted. "All I know about you is that your name starts with M and you work for the government."

Another chuckle greeted him. "I also spend far too much time at the office and listen to classical music."

"And seduce police officers over the phone," he added tentatively. His recent encounter with a bloody _superhero_ seemed to have bolstered his confidence into volunteering the feelings that had bloomed within him in the last week.

"Oh, no, Inspector, I assure you, I save my most seductive telephone voice for you."

Lestrade smiled. Was he _flirting_ with his Miracle Man? And was the soft, controlled voice actually flirting back? What was that line about not soiling where you sleep? "I bet you say that to all the Detective Inspectors."

The man laughed this time, a genuine rumbling laugh, and the conversation was warm and comfortable. Why had he never been able to talk like this with women? "Well, I must admit Inspector Dimmock swallowed that last line with more enthusiasm," the voice joked.

He'd never liked Dimmock, the DI next door. Pompous, cocky arse. "So," he broke off, turning the conversation back to work. "You know about Jim Moriarty, then?"

His Miracle Man hummed pensive acquiescence. "I've been watching those two men rather closely," he said. "I'm not sure that we can trust them, but I don't see them doing too much harm. I suppose we'll see tomorrow."

"They seemed nice enough. He had the air of a sort of younger Doctor Watson. He could be just what London needs."

"I thought _I_ was your Miracle?" the voice teased. "I will call you tomorrow, come good or ill."

Lestrade looked at the camera again and winked. "Not jealous, are you?" he asked.

There was a long pause; the DI worried suddenly that he might have gone a step too far. Finally the answer came, stiffly. "Jealousy is irrational. I don't get jealous."

Lestrade – curse his hormones – actually giggled like a pubescent girl. "Of course not," he said. The laugh faded back to comfortable silence. He juggled with the question in his mind for a while, before mentally shrugging. No harm in asking, right? "Can I meet you?" he asked. Time for a leap of faith, now that he knew for sure what the other man made him feel. He held his breath, staring at the camera, waiting for the stiff reprimand. _Out of line, Inspector._

"I'd like that," came the reply; the DI let out his breath undignifiedly. "But not yet. Soon." He could hear the smile in the other man's voice again. _Soon. _"Until tomorrow, Detective Inspector Lestrade."

"Greg," he corrected. "Please, it's Greg."

"As you wish." There was a pause. He was suddenly struck by an image of a teenaged _you hang up first _battle. "Goodnight, then," the Miracle Man said finally. "Greg."

Lestrade put down the phone and rested his head on the cool wood of his desk. It wasn't a dream. God, Sally was going to have a field day.

Mycroft Holmes smiled at the DI on his monitor. Something in the back of his mind niggled him, something about Sherlock, about not letting himself get emotionally involved in whatever was going on. He threw it away. There was just something about the stocky, grey-haired policeman that stripped his cautions away.


	9. A Turn of Events

The day dawned. It dawned bright and sharp and clear, and all the sort of things you want when you're about to have the biggest fight of your life, but Sherlock wasn't really interested in any of that. The important thing was that it dawned.

He began the day by bringing toast and jam to the imprisoned doctor. That was how he liked to start his mornings nowadays. He wasn't quite sure why John's smile when he walked in had quickly become the highlight of his day, but he didn't mind.

"Good morning, sweetheart," he said, sweeping into the room. He didn't knock; usually the doctor rose far before he did. This morning, however, Watson was sitting up in bed, the laptop Sherlock had doctored for him perched on his knees, his bare chest uncovered by the yellow blankets. The doctor's eyes flickered up to him and he shut the laptop quickly, but otherwise didn't react. Sherlock, strangely, found himself increasingly flustered. "Um, sorry," he said quickly. John grinned.

"Morning, Holmes," he replied airily, putting aside the computer. Sherlock found his eyes drawn to the doctor's tanned chest with its soft dusting of hair and the knotted scar tissue like a war medal soldered onto his shoulder; found his fingers itching to reach out and touch it. But John had that sort of flirty gleam in his eyes they'd been sharing far too much in the past week, and so Sherlock couldn't show his fascination or, subsequently, his embarrassment. He had to play the game.

"I brought you breakfast in bed, my darling," he said silkily, placing the tray on his legs.

"N'awh," John cooed. "Thanks, dear." Sherlock sat down on the edge of the bed as the doctor started spreading strawberry jam on his toast. "Did _you_ have breakfast this morning?" he asked conversationally, not looking up from the task.

Sherlock looked at him sceptically. "I never eat breakfast," he said archly. "Waste of time and energy."

"Speaking as a doctor, Holmes, I can officially tell you that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. It's not a waste of energy because food _gives_ you energy. And as for a waste of time, how long were you going to sit there and watch _me_ eat it?"

He considered that point; he liked watching John eat, for some reason. He thought it was because being able to watch the doctor do _anything_ reminded him that he'd won, even though he still wasn't sure that had been the right thing to do.

Doctor Watson picked up the second piece of toast and offered it to him. He shook his head. "Come on," John cajoled. "Just one bite, Holmes, come on. It's bloody toast, for God's sake, just eat it – do I have to feed it to you like a baby?"

Indeed, the doctor leaned forwards, the yellow blanket slipping further down his stomach, and shoved the toast up against Sherlock's lips, chuckling. He reacted automatically to the intrusion by opening his mouth to speak – _it's not funny, and I'm not eating that – _at which juncture the doctor unceremoniously stuffed the bread and jam between his teeth.

All in all, it was less than dignified and Sherlock was forced to concede that Doctor Watson had won this round. He took a bite of the toast with a scowl, wiping jam away from his lips and holding the offending piece of food in one hand like it was a pair of dirty underwear he'd picked up off the floor. John was still laughing. "Better?" he asked.

He swallowed and made a face of intense displeasure. The doctor laughed again and Sherlock fought off his own smile; the noise just sounded nice. He put the toast back on the tray, although he was sure Watson wouldn't want to eat it now. "Less than pleasant," he lied. Actually the move by Doctor Watson had produced a warm sort of feeling in his lower abdomen that wasn't at all bad, and he didn't mind strawberry jam as much as some other foods. "If you think –"

There was a _crash_, a _bang_, and a shriek from Mrs Hudson the landlady downstairs. Both Sherlock and John looked around in surprise. Sherlock's grey eyes flickered to the clock on the bedsit. _Oops. _How did time manage to get away with him like that up here?

"What was that?"

"That," Sherlock frowned, dusting the last of the toast crumbs off his hands and getting to his feet, "was Jim Moriarty. Judging by the entrance, he wasn't as ready as I thought."

John blinked and listened to the cry of _Holmes!_ from downstairs. Good thing Molly was out. "Who?"

"Oh, honestly, Watson, anyone would think you hadn't left your bedroom in weeks, don't you keep up with current affairs?" he teased, running a distracted hand through his hair. John grimaced at the joke. "Jim Moriarty has apparently been gifted with your powers, and now he thinks to challenge me. It sounds like he came in through the window, though, you always used the door."

John smiled. "Yes, it's so hard to find _polite_ superheroes nowadays, isn't it," he said wryly. "I bet he won't pay for the damage, either." Sherlock shook his head in mock-rue. "Well, you'd better get down there before he tears up the house. Don't hurt yourself, now, Sherlock."

The other man paused on his way to the door as he realised that this was the first time Watson had ever called him by his given name. "I won't," he said confidently, suddenly wanting to actually _defeat_ Jim if it would make John happy. Then he could spend all day up here. "Oh, and by the way, you do know I'm watching your Internet history, don't you, Doctor?" he threw back as he left the room.

John grimaced sheepishly as the door swung closed, then picked up the laptop again and hurriedly closed the fanfiction page he'd been browsing. He was very glad Holmes couldn't watch his word processor's history too, as the Office page popped up again. He took another gulp of his tea – made just the way he liked it, he noticed – and settled back on his pillows, reading back over what he had written.

_It was hours before the genius returned, and my bladder was starting to be a pressing inconvenience. I'd planned so many witty retorts for when he came back into the room, tied up by the silver ropes as I was, but when he finally burst through it like so many whirlwinds at once the only one I could think to bite out was to do with bodily functions. "You know, Holmes, superpowers and all, I'm still essentially human."_

_He pouted. That shouldn't have been attractive. Why did that make me want to hug him and smother him and never let him go? "Untrue," he replied, as usual seeing the truth straightaway. "Your point being?"_

Um… I really have to pee? _"There are certain bodily functions that even I'm not exempt from, that make staying tied up in one room all day rather uncomfortable." The answering awkward look that told me he understood was equally smotherable. God, I had to stop this. I was John Watson, for God's sake. I had to stop falling for Sherlock Holmes._

* * *

><p>Much as he hated to keep the young hero waiting, Sherlock was very aware that one cannot attempt to battle their new nemesis in pyjamas and a dressing gown, so he stopped off on the landing to shrug on his black cape and make an attempt to flatten his hair. While this was happening, the calls of "Holmes!" from the sitting room were getting louder and angrier.<p>

Well, good. The angrier he was, the better fight he'd put up. Finally, dressed and groomed, he threw the bedroom door open with a crash and stepped his most dramatic steps towards Jim Moriarty.

"Good of you to drop by," he stated silkily. The young professor scowled.

"What were you doing up there, Holmes?" he shot cruelly at him, nodding up the stairs.

"Private man things," Sherlock replied mysteriously. "I wouldn't expect you to understand."

Jim shot him a glare, but other than that had no reaction; Sherlock had expected him to have thrown a punch or something by now. He raised an expectant eyebrow – was the man expecting him to strike the first blow? Sherlock coughed awkwardly. "I believe, young hero, that this is the part where you attempt to take me to the police."

Jim smiled suddenly, but it wasn't a nice smile. It was cold and calculating and Sherlock was suddenly struck by the feeling that something had gone wrong. Something in this picture was very, very wrong. "I have another suggestion," the IT professional admitted, flopping down onto the sofa.

"You have a what?" he asked dumbly, coming around until he faced the youth again. Not only had he sat down without being invited, but he'd turned his back on him. In Sherlock's book, that was so rude as to be unacceptable. He still had that unnerving little smile on his face.

"Another suggestion," Jim repeated blandly. "Other than me taking you in."

Sherlock blinked. _No. No, this wasn't right. _"Well, I'm afraid it'll have to wait." He pulled out a long, slender gun from the pocket of his too-tight black pants and fired it in Moriarty's direction. The youth just batted the bullets away, but Sherlock had expected that. He fired it a few more times in quick succession, forcing the youth to stand up again and throw a half-hearted punch in his direction. "Come on, little one, put up a fight, could you?"

Moriarty's face twisted at _little one_, as Sherlock had suspected it might; he leapt towards him with a cry and showered him with blows. Yeah, okay, that hurt. He fired the gun again, and even though it had no effect on the professor he stopped hitting him, instead holding him into the floor with a hand on each shoulder, breathing heavily. His face calmed quickly, reassuming its collected smile. The smile Sherlock didn't like. "I think you should hear me out, Sherlock," he said lightly, letting his shoulders go but sitting up so that he was sitting on Sherlock's stomach. It was less than comfortable. "I could take you in to New Scotland Yard at the end of this conversation, but I don't want to. I admire you, Sherlock, I won't pretend I don't. But I'm a lot cleverer than you are."

Sherlock struggled under him, highly offended. "I'd appreciate it if you got off me now."

Moriarty's cruel smile widened. "Not until you've heard what I have to say," he whispered silkily. "I think you had the right idea at the beginning, when you took over. But Sherlock, you lack _vision_. You fail to see the potential of someone with your… skills. Now, you and I _together… _forget London, Sherlock, we could have the world."

_What?_ Sherlock stopped his struggling, shocked. "Are you suggesting we… team up?" he asked, so incredulous his head was almost exploding with it. _Seriously?_ This wasn't right, this wasn't how things were supposed to go. He had that sort of swooping sensation that you get when you fall over in a dream; this couldn't be happening. What was _wrong_ with him? What had happened to the heroic young man he'd seen yesterday?

"What else would I be suggesting?" Jim's dark Irish eyes bored into Sherlock's, full of mirth. It was nauseating, it was too much, it was _frightening._

Sherlock raised his fingers to his lips and whistled; a cohort of robots burst through the window Moriarty had destroyed and lifted the professor off him. "No!" he shouted as the bots threw the professor across the room. "This is so wrong – you're supposed to be a hero!"

Moriarty skipped into the air and sat back lazily. "Being a hero is boring," he said airily. "I was a criminal before I got the powers, why should I stop now?"

"Because you have the power to _fix_ things!" Sherlock shouted. "You have the ability to do some real good, and you'd rather burn and blister everything – wait, what?" The last part of the statement sunk into his mind. "You're a criminal?"

"One and only Jim Moriarty," he replied brightly. "Criminal mastermind _extraordinaire._"

Sherlock was aware that things had slipped so far out of his control that he was practically dead. Jim Moriarty, a _criminal_? But he'd seemed so eager to please him, to conform to John Watson's stereotype – and underneath all of that had been a criminal mastermind? "No," he whispered desperately, begging for it not to be true. "No, that can't be right –"

"Sorry, Sherlock," the professor – the _criminal_ – sneered. "I was the most dangerous man in London _before_ somebody gifted me with unfathomable superpowers."

"_No!_" Sherlock screamed. "You're a hero. I'm the villain. I do something bad and you take me to the police, that's how this works, that's how it's always worked, that's _why_ I gave you those powers!"

He realised the slip of the tongue too late. Moriarty smirked. "Oh, _you_ gave them to me? Well, thanks, Sherlock. I'm flattered, really. I'd always assumed it was someone from the government. Father had their lack of imagination."

Another bolt of anger shot through him. "_I'm _your Father," he snapped, turning around to pull out the cloak from behind the sofa. If Jim was going to play like this, he'd just have to goad him into being angry enough to fight properly.

Jim just smirked again. "Oh, I know. And I knew you were the one who slipped the genes in my Chinese that night. I can't thank you enough, Sherlock, really. Your constant references to Doctor Watson were cute, too. But honestly – _you_ killed him. You can't just bring him back."

Desperate now, and desperately angry, Sherlock grabbed a little black box off the kitchen table: the remote for his and Molly's latest weapon, left undeveloped since Watson's death. He shot a glance at one of the robots above his head – how he'd trained them to respond to his _glances_ he wasn't sure – and it shot into the bedroom, emerging with a matrix of wires and pressure-pads. Moriarty sat in a leisurely manner in midair, watching lazily. "I don't know what you think you're going to do, Sherlock," he purred lazily. Sherlock let the bots arrange the wires around his arms and legs, then pressed the red button on the remote. "I'm much stronger than you are. There's nothing you can do."

He'd just about finished that last sentence when the reinforced steel arm reached through the hole where the window used to be and smashed down on his head. Sherlock chuckled. "Oops. Didn't see that one coming, did you, _Professor? _Shall we take this outside?" He rolled his shoulders experimentally, the arm retracting as the huge robot shell outside mimicked his actions.

Jim sprang up from the floor. "Sounds delightful," he replied cheerfully. Sherlock jumped into the robot and swung his arms around, watching the metal shell around him amplify the movement. This was rather fantastic, he should have done this before. "So what was it, Sherlock?" Moriarty taunted, skipping out of the window. "Did you get lonely?"

"Of course not," he replied lightly, delivering a backhand that sent the young criminal cartwheeling down Baker Street. "I got bored."

He didn't even see the youth get up before he had cannoned into the join between the robot's head and shoulders and tipped him over. "Ah, I know how that feels," came the Irish lilt. "I can keep you entertained, Sherlock, if you'd let me. We can have the whole world as our playground together."

Sherlock grabbed Moriarty by the neck and lifted him up against the wall. "I created you to entertain me," he said softly. "But not like that."

Jim chuckled and grabbed onto the hand around his neck; Sherlock started to panic as he felt himself being lifted into the air. "You're not bored now, though, are you?"

"Well, now, Jim, for all intents and purposes you're playing _my_ game," he reminded him, shaking him off with ease and landing with a _crunch_ on the pavement.

The young professor arched an elegant eyebrow. "Oh, really?"

Suddenly Sherlock was on his back, Jim's hand reaching through the metal shell and clasping, coolly, around his neck. It was tight this time, choking him, pressing against his larynx, he couldn't breathe – "I don't play other people's games, Sherlock," the man whispered, pushing his face closer. He smelled nice, Sherlock noticed dumbly. "Now either you can have me as a friend, or you can have me as an enemy. A _proper_ enemy, not like that pathetic little game you had going with our late friend Doctor Watson."

Sherlock coughed weakly. The edges of his vision were starting to fray and close in, all grey and swirling. "Molly," he choked out. "I'll take Molly. I'll hurt her."

Moriarty smiled. "No, you won't," he called the bluff expertly. Sherlock knew he couldn't hurt Molly. He forged on with the bluff anyway, knowing he could make it _look_ like he was hurting her. Or _something_ – anything to make this stop.

"I will," he insisted.

"Off you go then, I don't care." The smile was still there; Sherlock could feel his fingers tingling numbly. "I only pretended to like _her_ so that I could get to you, and boy, didn't you deliver. I'll hurt her myself if you like."

"No!" It was embarrassing, but Sherlock could feel his hands automatically creeping up to try vainly to wrestle the younger man's hands away from their death grip on his neck.

The face was right next to his ear when it chuckled, so that the sound went right through him, making his bone marrow ache uncomfortably. "Oh, you're such a disappointment, Sherlock Holmes," the Irish lilt sounded in his ear.

Then suddenly the hand was off his neck and the professor was gone with only a rumble through the street as he pushed off the pavement. Sherlock lay there, taking great gulps of breath and watching the BBC helicopters close in on him, collapsed and helpless in the street; then, looking up, he saw a concerned face from an upstairs window laced with silver threads and right then, right there, Sherlock wished he could sink into the pavement and die.

John Watson had seen everything.


	10. Aftermath

**A/N: The violin piece Sherlock plays in this chapter is called _The Mason's Apron_, and the version I was listening to was played by Dezi Donnelly.**

* * *

><p>Mycroft had been eating a belated breakfast in his dressing gown when Jane called him to say that Sherlock was lying in a heap on the road in Baker Street. He wondered, briefly, as he threw a suit on haphazardly and jumped into a car, whether his brother had eyes on him just as he tried to keep eyes on Sherlock. It would be just like him to time his defeat when he knew Mycroft was occupied and wouldn't get the memo.<p>

It must have been bad, he realised as he got there and saw the shock of pale skin and dark hair still lying motionless in the middle of the road, enveloped in a vaguely humanoid metal shape. The familiar jump in his chest, the _thump_ of his heart missing a beat, stopped him as he got out of the sleek black car. The scene was all too familiar; Sherlock hurt himself too much. That was one reason he had decided to help Scotland Yard, because it seemed cruel but he wouldn't be able to hurt himself in prison. The other reason, apart from the state of London's political reputation… well, Mycroft was finding the Detective Inspector in charge of the investigation to find Sherlock increasingly disarming. Somehow, confronted with Gregory Lestrade's weatherbeaten face at the other end of a monitor and his gravelly voice at his ear through a phone, he found himself dropping away all his defences.

Sherlock blinked blankly up at him for a few moments when he rapped the finial of his umbrella against the steel shell. Then he groaned. "Piss off, Mycroft."

He presented his younger brother with a thin-lipped smile. "I take it you are fully aware of your position, then," he said calmly. "The woman across the street has called the police. If you cannot rouse yourself to clear the scene, you will be arrested." He looked around the alley, puzzling the other point that occurred to him. "Although I'm not quite clear why your Professor Moriarty didn't finish the job and arrest you himself."

Sherlock struggled to sit up. "Jim…"

"Yes, Sherlock, I know it was you. I hope you prepared for this outcome."

The younger Holmes coughed weakly; Mycroft could see the faint red marks that would become bruises on the pale skin of his elegant neck. "No," he coughed. "Jim… I wanted to fix things, but I made them worse."

Mycroft snorted gently. "Yes, congratulations," he said scathingly. "You didn't see that coming?"

"I wanted to create a hero," Sherlock expanded, glaring at his brother for his sarcasm, visibly gathering his strength to pull himself to his feet as the sounds of sirens grew louder through the streets. "I was so stupid. I created a monster."

Mycroft patted his brother dismissively on the back – he could never treat Sherlock the way he wanted to, like family – and gave him the usual superior look. "There's no such thing as a hero, Sherlock," he assessed sadly. "Not anymore. You made sure of that."

Something like realisation flittered over that angular face. He took a hesitant step forward, clutching at Mycroft's waistcoat and coughing as he stumbled. "You have to find Moriarty," he coughed.

Mycroft raised an elegant eyebrow. "You mean, _you_ have to find Moriarty," he countered. "Thanks to your efforts on London's public face, I have quite enough to be getting on with."

The Westminster division of the local police spun in all their noisy, undignified glory around the corner of Baker Street. Mycroft calculated that it would take a further ten minutes before the Sherlock Holmes Task Force – led, of course, by Detective Inspector Lestrade – followed them and he had to clear off sharpish. "Sherlock," he said sharply. "I assume you know how to correct the situation?"

Anyone who did not know the famed supervillain on close terms would have mistaken the slight downwards flick of his grey eyes for slight shame at the circumstances; Mycroft, who had known him since he was born, knew it was an expression of deep mortification. His brother had no idea how to fix this. "I'll handle it, Mycroft," he said softly nonetheless.

"See that you do."

One of the policemen – no, a woman, Mycroft realised – stepped forwards, a pair of silvery handcuffs dropping in a dramatic, sinister fashion out of one hand. "Sherlock Holmes?" she barked in a sharp, dog-like voice. Riot control expert, Mycroft guessed. "You're under arrest."

Sherlock regained most of his usual manner faced with the somewhat flabby policewoman. He smirked at her. "Nice try, sweetheart." He put two fingers to his lips and whistled, high and shrill. Mycroft wisely stepped back; mere moments later, a myriad of spindly robots swooped down on them and lifted Sherlock into the air and away in the opposite direction from the police cars littering Baker Street.

Mycroft watched his brother go until he could no longer see the dark swarm of robots against the London skyline. It hurt sometimes, having to play the role Sherlock assigned to him from childhood. He never wanted an arch-enemy. All he wanted was a family, someone who loved him and supported him no matter what; he wanted a brother who was also a friend. But role notwithstanding, he knew his brother; knew that there was a part of this puzzle he was not giving up.

Lost in contemplation of this, it was a while before the government official recognised the voice behind him that was quickly becoming more familiar to him than his own.

"Excuse me, sir, but if you're not cleared to be here I'm going to have to ask you to leave. This is a crime scene."

There was a calloused hand on his arm, and Mycroft suddenly had to combat the sensation of having just swallowed his heart. He turned slowly around to face the policeman. He was even more – God, how was he even better looking up close, the slight worry-lines adding more character to his rakish face? "Detective Inspector Lestrade," he greeted as soon as he could trust his voice to form coherent words.

The DI took a step back, looking as though someone had just slapped him in the face with a wet fish. "Oh, my God," he murmured, passing a hand over his face with the air of a man certain he is dreaming. "It's you."

* * *

><p><em>There's no such thing as a hero, not anymore. You made sure of that.<em>

Once he was sure they wouldn't be looking for him, Sherlock ordered the robots diligently clinging to arms and legs to turn around. He needed to get back to where he could think.

Jim – that had been unexpected. Why hadn't he expected that? He'd trusted Molly's wild praises of her new squeeze. He knew Molly would make Sherlock himself out to be an angel if someone asked. He'd been stupid. Why had he been so desperate?

Baker Street slowly flew into view. Sherlock hid behind an old-fashioned, disused chimney stack to watch what was going on. The Sherlock Holmes Task Force had arrived; Sergeant Donovan was questioning the couple that lived across the road, with her wiry hair and sarcastic expression; that fool Anderson was brushing the steel exoskeleton he'd left behind for fingerprints. Sherlock frowned; why was Mycroft still there? Surely he had more important things to do than – oh. _Oh._ Was that DI Lestrade he was standing so close to? Oh, that was priceless.

With a wry smile, he pressed the self-destruct button on the steel robot's remote; while everyone was laughing at Anderson's sudden lack of eyebrows and look of intense surprise he jumped nimbly through the smashed window.

"Sherlock!"

He dusted himself off casually. "Shh, Molly, they'll hear you outside."

She stood with a cup of tea in her hand, evidently halfway to the settee, her mouth open in an 'o' of surprise. She closed it hurriedly. "I heard what happened – are you okay?"

He rolled his eyes. "I'm fine." Actually his neck hurt and his head was pounding from the prolonged oxygen loss, but he'd been through worse.

"Do you know who it was?"

Sherlock looked at her, genuinely concerned for his wellbeing, no idea she was dating a homicidal maniac. "No," he said softly. "No, I have no idea. But I'll find out."

She smiled warmly. "Okay. Tea?"

"Thank you." He turned to look at the window. It was completely ruined, the wooden frame lying on the ground in splinters, surrounded by a confetti of broken glass. "Fix that, would you?" he said to the robots who had brought him inside.

Molly handed him a fresh cup of tea; he gestured to her lab-coat. "Were you going somewhere?"

She looked down. "Um, yeah, I was going to Bart's – did you want to come?"

"No, thank you, Molly," he deflected, smiling. "Have you seen the violin?" He needed to think.

"I think it's upstairs," she mused. "Would you like me to go up and check?"

"Oh, no," he said, too quickly. "No, it's all right, thanks. You have fun at Bart's." He wondered if he was overdoing the attempt to be nice, but she just beamed at him. Some people never learned.

"Oh, and there's some stuff in the fridge for sandwiches if you get hungry."

He was about to reply with his usual 'I won't' when he remembered that he probably _would_, for John. "I might, thanks."

She stopped, grinning foolishly. "Are you sure you're okay? I mean, you're acting almost human. He didn't hit you on the head, did he?"

Sherlock threw a spanner at her, which she ducked on her way to the door, laughing. He watched the space she'd left for a while. She'd gained so much confidence since she met Jim – all she'd needed was someone to tell her she was worthy and suddenly she could stand up to him. He'd thought he liked her docile and compliant; it turned out it was quite nice to have someone bold enough to joke with him. It was a shame Jim was a criminal mastermind who didn't really care about her.

Speaking of which. There was some serious thinking that needed to be done; thinking that required a Stradivarius. He quickly made a haphazard sandwich and carried it up to the bedroom.

"Come in," came the reply to his knock. After he'd been severely embarrassed that morning, Sherlock had made it a rule to knock. "Lunchtime, is it?" Doctor Watson asked coolly, turning around as Sherlock entered the room.

"Yes, dear." The doctor was standing by the window, where he'd been when Jim had left. It made Sherlock's gut twinge in humiliation to think that he'd seen everything. Now, however, he stepped away from it and took the plate.

"Thanks. You know, though," he said conversationally, giving a flash of that disarming grin. "I'm pretty sure it's illegal to keep people cooped up all day, even in prison. Even maximum-security prisoners get taken out for a jog around the block every day."

Sherlock sent him a disgusted look. "Well, _I'm _not jogging round the block with you," he dismissed. "It can be as illegal as it likes."

John tucked into his sandwich. "Fair enough," he shrugged cheerfully. "It was just a suggestion." His hazel eyes flicked up over Sherlock, taking in the finger-marks at his neck, red and angry. "Are you okay?" he asked gently. "I saw what happened. I can take a look if you –"

"I'm _fine_," Sherlock snapped, the rest of him turning red and angry to match. That was the last thing he needed, Doctor Watson pitying him.

John retracted the hand he'd put out to Sherlock's face as if he'd slapped it. "Okay."

Sherlock felt slightly guilty. Watson had just been trying to help, as any doctor would have, and _he'd _be fed up too if he'd been shut in one room for two weeks. Actually, he'd be insufferable. He took a deep breath. "I just need to think. Is my violin up here?"

John smiled again, relaxing. "Was that on the same train of thought?"

"Yes," Sherlock said shortly. "I play the violin when I'm thinking."

"Fair enough," John repeated. "It's under the bed, hang on." He dropped to his knees and crawled under the bed. Sherlock was presented with a lovely view of the army doctor's backside. He tore his eyes away, his face reddening for an entirely different reason. Why was it doing that? The arse wiggled invitingly as the doctor backed out, violin case in hand. "There."

"Um," Sherlock said, feeling the flush in his cheeks intensify until it was almost painful. "Thanks." He took the violin, simultaneously wanting to run far away and never leave. He must have hesitated before turning to the door, because Doctor Watson cleared his throat.

"Would it… would it disturb your thinking if you played it here?"

Sherlock stared at him. "What, you want me to play for you?" he asked, trying to keep his tone flippant.

"If it's all right?" How did he manage to sound so casual, like the request didn't mean anything? Sherlock's playing was a piece of his soul. Why did he want so badly to give it to Doctor Watson? After a few more seconds' pause, Sherlock settled cross-legged onto the bed and unpacked the instrument.

"Any requests?" he asked, quirking a half-smile as he tuned the Stradivarius. John sat down opposite him.

He shrugged. "Something I'd recognise?" he suggested.

Sherlock smiled and tried out a tentative jumping scale, right down to the low E on the bass string on the first pass and right up to the screeching high C on the second. John winced; Sherlock's smile grew. He repeated the pattern of notes and gradually evened it out into a fast rhythm.

It had been so long since he'd played for an audience. He'd forgotten the thrill as John's foot started bouncing unconsciously to the rhythm of bow on string; the laugh as a frown started to crease his forehead as he struggled to place the tune, then broadened into a delighted smile of recognition. The rhythm was positively furious, and Sherlock's whole body trembled with the joy of it. He probably should have worked up to this, and it was supposed to be played with accompaniment, but most violin pieces were and he wanted to impress John with his background knowledge. As the frenzy of the wild Irish dance increased, even Sherlock wasn't sure how he was keeping up, managing to land every note soundly with fingers and bow. John's foot was having a field day. He looked like he was having a hard time keeping himself from jumping up and attempting to jig around the room. Sherlock rather liked this song; it had a strange sort of hypnotic way of stripping one's composure and self-control.

Finally he wound down a frantic spiral scale and signed off with a flourish. John burst into enthusiastic applause, then looked slightly ashamed of his outburst and stopped. Sherlock, panting furiously, loosened his reflexive grip on the stem of the violin.

"The Mason's Apron," John assessed, delight still evident in his voice. Sherlock huffed out a laugh. "I haven't heard that since I was a kid. How did you know I'd recognise it? Most people don't."

"You'd be surprised," Sherlock panted. "But I knew your parents were Irish. It's always been popular in Ireland."

John looked down. "Well. I'm adopted."

"I guessed." Sherlock grinned at him and took off his black cape. Had it always been that hot in here? "Doorstep drop, was it?"

The doctor grinned ruefully. "Predictably." Sherlock bent the violin under his arm until he was holding it like a cello and started absently plucking out chords. "Unfortunately it means I have no idea why I am the way I am." John looked away, turning his gaze out the window, his next comment quiet and ashamed. "Or how I could fix it."

Sherlock's fingers slipped in surprise and he hit a jarring chord that made both men flinch. "_Fix_ it?" he repeated incredulously. "Why would you want to do that?"

John shrugged uncomfortably. "I didn't, usually. Only… I've never really _fit in_ anywhere."

Something bitter rose to the back of Sherlock's throat. John Watson, who had everything, still wanted more. He wasn't sure whether to pity him or be disgusted with him, but he could feel his heart sinking like a baby in a lake. "You managed it better than I did," he said finally. John looked up at him sharply, aware that he'd said something wrong, but Sherlock had already turned away, his face closed, feeling tears burn in the bridge of his nose.

He stood up abruptly and put the violin back in its case. "I have to go," he said quickly. He glanced at John as he straightened up; the doctor was biting his lip in consternation, in a pose Sherlock had to try very hard not to let his brain classify as 'cute'. "Good afternoon, Doctor," he finished coldly.

Outside in the hallway, he leaned against the wall and clutched the violin case to his chest, trying to slow his breathing. He wasn't sure why he'd felt so strongly about John's comment about 'fixing' himself. He knew what it was like to be different and wish you weren't – but he'd been familiar with Watson in school. He'd been popular, well liked – how could he not be? – whereas Sherlock himself had been persecuted relentlessly, beaten up by the bigger kids until he learned to build things and experiment with stopping them. Sherlock had always wished he could be normal. Until he'd met John.

Doctor Watson had been different too, and even though they were different in different ways and they hadn't gotten along, there was something between them that Sherlock soon came to live and breathe. He didn't want to be anything other than what he was when John was around because he felt _alive_, and so sure that nobody else in the world had ever felt as alive as he did, that he couldn't feel like this if he was like them. He'd thought that John felt something similar.

Apparently not. Apparently John still wished he could be 'normal' – which meant a life without Sherlock. But why did that matter so much? Why did he care so much about John Watson?

He rested his head on the crudely-papered wall and felt the panic gradually drain away. _Oh, John. I think I'm in some serious trouble with you._

Inside, John took another bite of his sandwich and went back to typing. _Sometimes I think I'm imagining it. Other times I'm sure there's something there. He's Sherlock Holmes, for God's sake. He doesn't have a heart, I've spent most of my life living by that knowledge. But sometimes I think I can see one in his eyes. I can't stop myself from showing him how I feel anymore. I shouldn't want to comfort him, shouldn't worry that today I've said something that offended him, but I do, more than anything. _

_Oh, Sherlock. I'm in some serious trouble with you._

* * *

><p>Detective Inspector Lestrade arrived in Baker Street a few minutes after Sherlock Holmes left it, according to the rather battered-looking officers who had apparently tried to arrest him. He hadn't really expected to be there in time; after all, he'd been naively expecting Jim Moriarty to drop him off trussed up like a Christmas turkey.<p>

In retrospect, that had been entirely foolhardy and Lestrade could kick himself for it. _Seriously?_ Some Irish kid just out of university and his… 'Father' right out of a kid's cartoon come into his office and offer to stop Sherlock Holmes and he just _lets_ them? He just stood back and waited for London's most wanted man to be dropped on the floor of his office in handcuffs.

What world did he _live_ in?

"What happened?" he asked the reporting sergeant, a grim-faced, solid woman with hair vaguely reminiscent of lambs-wool. She looked at him sternly until he flashed his badge at her. "Detective Inspector Lestrade. I'm heading the task force."

Lestrade saw something move in his peripherals; looking around, he saw the back of a tall, suited man who had jumped rather violently at the sound of his introduction. He studied the back of the figure. Well-dressed. Auburn hair. Umbrella clutched like a vine-prop in his right hand in such a way that begged someone to kick it out from underneath him. He'd never seen him before.

"Well," the woman grunted, "that's 221 Baker Street, there." She pointed at the house with the smashed window. "Neighbours say that thing came tearing around the corner from somewhere down there, and then Holmes jumped out the window and into it. They say there was another man involved, only that's where I'm not sure I should trust them. They're elderly, you know. They say the other man was _flying_. Like, John-Watson flying. Then that thing," she indicated the metal thing, "came trudging round the corner by itself, and this is where I get muddled. They say Holmes put it on like you'd put on a suit, and then eventually the flying man pinned him to the ground until he passed out, and then flew away. Holmes was still here when we arrived on the scene, but of course we couldn't arrest him."

Lestrade rubbed ruefully at the stubble on his cheeks. "Good work, officer…"

"Sergeant Briggs, sir. Westminster local."

"Good work, Sergeant. We'll take over from here." The woman nodded sharply and started barking orders to her unit; Lestrade just looked at his task force. "Well, off you go then," he told them wearily.

Within minutes, the local police unit had moved out and the only people in the street were the Sherlock Holmes Task Force, the elderly couple from across the road, and the tall man. Lestrade cast him a vaguely irritated look. Who _was_ he? He looked like he had every right to be here, and yet Lestrade hadn't a clue why.

"Excuse me, sir," he said formally, placing a gentle hand on the man's pinstriped arm, "but if you don't have clearance to be here I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to leave. This is a crime scene."

The man – goodness, he really was tall – turned slowly around to face him. There was a silence, as though the man was struggling for words. Lestrade frowned. Did they know each other? There was something familiar about him. Finally he spoke. "Detective Inspector Lestrade."

Said Inspector's brain went into overdrive. _It's him. _He staggered backwards like he'd been hit, his mind behaving like his grandmother's old scratched Patsy Cline record, repeating the same words over and over. _It's him it's him it's him. _

"I must admit I'm surprised at the speed of your arrival, Inspector. I had allowed myself a further seven minutes to depart before a meeting between us became necessary."

Lestrade slowly became aware that he was floundering like a goldfish, his mouth opening and closing stupidly. _This_ – this elegant, refined beauty – was his Miracle Man. When that fact had sunk in enough to allow the rest of his brain to function, he began to process what had just been said. Then the outrage kicked in.

"What, you planned to sneak away so you wouldn't have to meet me? Why's that?"

The Miracle frowned. "I feared us meeting face to face would be disadvantageous to the situation. I had hoped to be able to disclose my identity to make such a meeting more comfortable for you, and at this stage in your investigation protocol prevents me from doing so. Trust me, Gregory, there is nothing I would have liked more than to meet you today. But it was not… desirable." Lestrade felt himself relaxing, despite the fact that the Miracle hadn't really said much conclusive. "In any case, it does not matter. We have met face to face anyway – good afternoon, Inspector." He extended a hand politely. "I'm afraid I still cannot introduce myself properly, but we can shake hands nonetheless."

Lestrade couldn't help but smile as he put his hand into the soft, thin-fingered one proffered. "I'll just keep calling you 'Miracle', then," he said cheerfully. The Miracle smiled.

"That would certainly do wonders for the size of my ego." He looked around balefully at the street. "Although I fear I have been less than miraculous in this situation."

Lestrade suddenly remembered where he was and why he was here and the guilt came rushing right back. He realised he was still holding the Miracle's hand and let it go quickly, turning to watch Anderson with the metal shell that had apparently held Sherlock Holmes. "I was so stupid to trust him," he berated himself. "Honestly, I can't believe I did that – some random kid and his dad who looks like he spent most of his life in a nut-house on a mountain somewhere walk into my office and tell me they're going to arrest Sherlock Holmes and I stand back and let them do it. I could kick myself. How juvenile is that?"

"You forget the boy could fly," the Miracle reminded him. He felt his heartbeat flutter slightly as a delicate hand rested on his arm. "I trusted him too. It seems we placed too much faith in the good-heartedness of our community."

Lestrade snorted. "Which makes it even more stupid. I'm a homicide detective. I've seen the good-heartedness of our community in a gutter, over and over." He shook his head sadly. "We're just so out of our depth with Sherlock Holmes. Our entire task force is completely snowed under, constantly, and yet we might as well not exist." He looked at the Miracle, watching him with pity on his pale face. Usually he hated being pitied, but he found he didn't mind so much in this case. He smiled suddenly. "On the bright side, at least I know for sure now that _you're_ not Sherlock Holmes playing with us. That makes me feel a lot better."

He missed the sad smile on his Miracle's face that said he'd misjudged something. "I'm glad." The two of them looked at each other for a moment. "Gregory, I… I have reason to believe that James Moriarty now constitutes an extreme threat to the city. Perhaps even more than Sherlock Holmes himself."

Lestrade felt a chill riffle the hairs on his arms. Great, that was all the task force needed. A Sherlock Holmes with superpowers. "How do you know?"

"I'm afraid I can't tell you. I am still attempting to discern the level of threat, but I think you should begin considering the options around evacuating London."

The DI's knees almost gave way. "What? It's _that _bad?"

"I'm not sure. But a confidential source has given me reason to believe it may be. For whatever reason James Moriarty gained John Watson's level of power, he seems to be the worst person possible to bestow them upon. You're a detective, Inspector – have you ever considered the possibility of an underlying organisation that controls much of London's criminal activity?"

"Yeah." Lestrade had often thought about this; in fact, he was certain such an organisation existed. He just didn't have the first idea about how to track it down.

"I have done some research and I believe Professor Moriarty may be at the head of such an organisation. I have put the most capable person I know in charge of the investigation as to how these superpowers may be removed from his person." Lestrade noticed a slight smirk at the corners of his thin lips, as though the idea was amusing. "In the meantime, every precaution should be taken to ensure the safety of London's populace. If this means evacuating them, that may be a step we must take."

Lestrade sighed. "If there was ever a time we needed John Watson, it's now," he commented dully.

A slight frown began to crease the Miracle's forehead. "Indeed," he agreed slowly. "Indeed."


	11. Interruptions and Complications

Sherlock put off delivering Doctor Watson's breakfast for as long as he could before he started feeling guilty. He still wasn't entirely sure why the doctor's comments the afternoon before had hurt him so badly. He supposed it was because he'd assumed the doctor was like him.

Who was he kidding? John was nothing like him.

Sherlock had had a crush once in high school. Victor had been aloof and disdainful; no-one had liked him and they had taunted the young Holmes, an awkward, gawky child, telling him that he and the much older Victor Trevor would make the perfect couple. Sherlock had taken this to mean that Victor would understand, that he felt the same way about humanity in general as he did, that he would be interested in Sherlock's chemical experiments and ways to slow them down. He had offered his romantic interests not thinking they might be turned away. Certainly not with the cold contempt and sheer _disgust_ they had been.

Maybe what hurt the most was that his feelings when he'd realised that _John_ didn't share his views on the world had brought back so sharply the way he'd felt when _Victor_ had revealed the same deficiency. Maybe what hurt was forcing himself to see that he was as helplessly attracted to the flying ex-army doctor as he once had been to the proud senior student.

Well, it was hopelessly inconvenient. And futile. And laughable. And simply _unacceptable. _

He snapped the toaster down slightly harder than necessary and the noise brought Molly around the corner, clad in a grey-green dress Sherlock had never seen before with her lab-coat on her arm, smiling good morning at him as she tried to attach heavy-looking dangly things to her ears. He felt his heart sink even further. "Where are you going?" he asked.

Her smile widened. "Jim's taking me out for breakfast," she said happily. Sherlock shook his head.

"I don't think that's a good idea, Molly," he said gently, putting the kettle on. She frowned innocently at him.

"Why not? You can cope without me – I'm sure you're not going to be attacked again this morning."

"No, I wouldn't think so," he remarked idly. "Molly, it's not safe. _He's_ not safe."

The toast popped cheerily out of the toaster, in contrast to the changing mood of the kitchen. Molly's smile had disappeared. "Why do you say that?"

Sherlock took a deep breath. Why was it so hard to tell her? "Because… he's not… it's not… Molly, can you trust me on this one? I don't think you should be seeing Jim Moriarty. I don't trust him."

Her fingers had tightened on the strap of her black handbag. Sherlock tensed. That wasn't a good sign. When she spoke, her voice was high and shrill. "Why not? _Why not? _Why do you have to spoil everything? _Why_ shouldn't I be seeing Jim?"

Sherlock busied himself buttering and jamming John's toast. Molly snorted herself into a frenzy behind him, and then suddenly calmed down. "Are you… Sherlock, are you _jealous?_"

He grabbed at the excuse. "If I was – if I loved you, Molly, would you stop seeing him?"

She gaped at him as he tried to hold her eyes in what he hoped was a sincere kind of way. Sherlock wasn't very good at sincere. The kettle boiled behind him; he turned away to make tea, and so missed the moment when her face hardened. "No," she said finally.

He turned around in surprise. "What?"

"No," she repeated angrily. "No! I've been around for _years_, Sherlock, I've just been sitting here scurrying around and hoping you'd notice me, and you never cared! If you even _realised_ I loved you, you just used it to make me do things for you, and I did them anyway – I've been here forever. If you wanted me, you could have had me _then_. Now it's too late. Now I've got Jim instead, and I'm sorry if you don't like it, but it's your fault."

There was a knock on the door; Jim. Sherlock fought his goosebumps at knowing he was so close to the criminal. Molly turned around stoically and started to bustle out, leaving Sherlock blinking behind her. He quickly gathered the breakfast onto a tray and followed her. "Molly, please –"

"For God's sake, Sherlock!" She turned back one last time. "Would you just – why do you have that breakfast on a tray? Where are you taking it?"

He shrugged nonchalantly. "Upstairs. Change of scenery."

She narrowed her eyes. "Why? You've been going up there a lot lately. What are you hiding up there?" He looked sheepish, about to open his mouth and deny it. "Don't try and tell me there's nothing up there, you've been sneaking up there for weeks. You're not the only person who can guess other people's secrets, Sherlock. What is it?"

By the end of her tirade she was almost shouting, and so Sherlock shouted back. "I'm keeping Doctor Watson prisoner up there secretly!" he confessed angrily. "And the reason I don't want you to see Jim is because he's a psychopath, Molly, he's the one who attacked me yesterday!"

She stared at him in shocked silence. He let out a long breath. He'd thought it might feel better to have someone else who knew his secret; it felt worse. What was she going to say?

"You think this is all a joke, don't you?" she said quietly, her voice shaking. "This is ridiculous. I won't be back for dinner tonight. Maybe you can sort out what the truth is when I'm gone."

And she turned on her heel and stalked out. Sherlock swore and dashed up the stairs, throwing the door open unceremoniously. He hardly noticed Watson's yelp of surprise and hurried closing of the laptop; he dumped the tray on the doctor's lap and rushed to the window. "Sherlock?"

Outside, through the spun threads of silver, he could see Molly embracing – he suppressed a shudder – Jim Moriarty.

"Holmes!" He looked around at the doctor; sitting up on the bed, fully-clothed this time, clutching the tray and looking concerned. "What's happening?"

Sherlock glared at him for a moment, then looked back out of the window. The young couple were still talking happily. "Nothing," he said finally. Perhaps Moriarty wasn't going to hurt her; at least, not today. With another look full of contempt at Doctor Watson, he turned to leave.

"Sherlock?"

The voice that called him back was the smallest he'd ever heard John use; smaller, even, than his 'I won't stop you' confession in the Westminster chapter-house. It tugged at Sherlock's heart until he turned around. "What?"

John shrugged uncomfortably. "I'm not sure how I offended you yesterday, but it wasn't my intention. I'm really sorry."

Sherlock sighed. "No matter. It was a misunderstanding on my part."

He turned to leave, but John got up and took a step towards him. "What did you misunderstand?" he asked quietly. Sherlock turned his face away.

"I… your comment about never fitting in. I just… the closest thing to a friend _I've_ ever had is Molly, and leaving aside for the moment the fact that I turned her boyfriend into a criminal mastermind with superpowers, she only stays with me because I manipulated her physical attraction to me. I've never fit in even in the slightest, never been remotely liked. But I didn't care, I didn't _want _to fit in. I _liked_ the way I was." He looked up at John and saw pity on his face and hated it. "I was slightly shocked to find that even though you received more positive attention than I did, you still wished things were different," he withheld in a stiffer manner. John took another step forward; Sherlock mirrored it with a step back.

"I thought," he continued composedly, "that you and I were different in much the same way. I thought that's why we gravitated towards one another. But apparently I was mistaken."

John's face was really quite the picture. "No, Sherlock, please," he started. Sherlock shook his head.

Sherlock had worked himself into a sort of confessional frenzy, and had to keep going, or something might explode inside him. And who was John going to tell anyway? "Allow me to say, Doctor Watson, that the years I spent with you were the best times I ever had." John sat down heavily on the bed again. "John, I… I think –"

A woman's scream split the tension in the room like Ralph Wiggum bending down. Sherlock snapped out of his reverie and ran to the window, all too aware of the doctor at his elbow.

He was just in time to see a screaming Molly Hooper being dragged through the air and away by her ankle, clasped tightly in Moriarty's levitating hand.

* * *

><p>Detective Inspector Lestrade sawed gently at his steak, and politely lifted the forkful of tender meat to his mouth. He was so hungry he felt like dropping knife and fork and attacking the cut like a dog, but he was trying extra-hard to maintain his manners.<p>

He was a bit nervous.

His Miracle sat opposite him, close enough to touch, picking delicately at the lettuce in a Caesar salad. His manner was so impeccable as to be almost like a dance. Lestrade felt that he was perfectly justified in being nervous, and wasn't in the slightest ashamed that he was staring.

There was something hypnotic about the Miracle, something that drew and held the eye. He was just so obviously _in control_, so calm and unflappable that Lestrade felt safer in his presence, but that had been like that when all he'd known was the voice. For some reason, seeing the Miracle in person had been a revelation. He'd been expecting someone older, stuffier, or someone younger just putting on a voice to take the piss. Maybe it was the _surety_ that this man was real that had him so transfixed.

It was made slightly awkward by the fact that his Miracle was staring at him, too. The two men's eyes remained glued on each other as their forks guessed the way from plate to mouth on their own. The DI, always slightly lacking in proprioception, had missed more than once. The third time proved to be too much for his brain, hyped on hunger and nervous energy, and he burst out laughing.

The restaurant quieted as everyone turned to look at the policeman quietly laughing himself into a corner. The Miracle smiled in amusement. Lestrade finally recovered himself and looked around. "Sorry," he said quietly.

Entertainment over, the other guests in the upmarket restaurant turned back to their own conversations. "It's quite all right, Inspector. Although I'd quite like to know what it was that amused you so."

Lestrade frowned. "You can call me Greg now. We're on a _date_. I don't even know your name and I'm _dating_ you. And I don't care."

The Miracle smiled softly. "I'm glad you don't care." He took a sip of wine, his every movement perfectly controlled and executed. Lestrade felt like something of a barbarian in the company of this exhibition. "And I feel the need to apologise again for my lack of identity."

He shrugged. "I'm just relieved you're real," he admitted. "The whole time, I wanted to believe you but I was so aware that you could be anybody. You could be some teenager with incredible voice-acting skills. You could have been Sherlock Holmes, it seemed like the sort of thing he'd do. And when I let myself get closer to you, even if it was only in my head, I knew that I'd only fall harder if it turned out you were just a practical joke."

The Miracle frowned. "I assure you I am no practical joke, Greg."

Lestrade smiled. "Well, I know that now. And now that I know I just… why did you choose me?"

"I have watched the situation around Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson for its entire duration; I have to say, the death of Doctor Watson was entirely unexpected," the Miracle said pensively. "After it became clear that Sherlock would resist control from other sources, I knew action had to be taken. You have done a fantastic job of heading the Sherlock Holmes Task Force, Detective Inspector Lestrade," he said, quirking his thin lips into a smile. "Considering the few resources you have had to capture such an adversary. I thought perhaps you could use a hand. It turned out I miscalculated slightly the extent of Sherlock's reactions to the situation. Grievously, it may turn out."

"Sherlock," Lestrade repeated slowly.

"I'm sorry?"

Lestrade looked up at him, his gaze stronger. "You call him Sherlock," he stated. "Not Holmes."

The Miracle's thin lips tightened almost imperceptibly. "Yes." He fiddled with his silver fork in an almost awkward affectation. "I had intended to maintain a greater level of distance from you, as befitting the situation," he admitted. "But there's something…" he trailed off gently, not meeting Lestrade's eyes. The DI, never one to beat about the bush, took a deep breath and dived into the deep end.

"Are you attracted to me, my Miracle?"

The aforementioned looked decidedly awkward, but smiled. "I have little experience in the field of attraction, but I believe that may be the case."

Lestrade blinked. This formal, roundabout way of speaking was going to take some getting used to. But he _would_ get used to it. He rather liked it. "That was a yes, right?"

"Definitely." His heart proclaimed its excitement at the word by thumping loudly like an excited child; his brain promptly diverted extra blood and oxygen to it to assure it it was not forgotten and try to calm it down. The outward effect of this was that Lestrade's hand – the one holding his fork – was forgotten in the internal emergency and relaxed its grip, resulting in the clatter of silver on his plate and a bit of heavy breathing to get the extra oxygen to his heart.

"Oh, good," he stammered while his brain tried to work out what had gone wrong. The Miracle smiled at him again. "Me too."

Thankfully, he was allowed a few seconds' respite while the internal clamour was sorted out and all body parts accounted for. His Miracle cleared his throat gently. "I am not the sort of person who asks innocent Detective Inspectors to lunch without being attracted to them," he said, just the slightest hint of sarcasm in his voice. Lestrade loved how he knew that voice so well he could read every emotion in it even when it appeared to show no emotion at all. It didn't look like the Miracle showed much emotion in his elegant face. "But I should warn you, dating and relationships… romance in general… has never been my strong point. I've always considered myself somewhat married to my position in the government."

Lestrade snorted, thinking of all the times Sally had told him he should take an early night and hit the pub. "Me too," he repeated. "Most police officers are. Well, the good ones are."

"And you are one of the very best." A warm, soft hand closed over his on the table; Lestrade looked up in shock. The Miracle took the hand away quickly. "I'm sorry. Was that not appropriate? I just –" Lestrade grinned and lunged for the hand again until their fingers were twined together on the tabletop. Unfortunately at the gesture his heart lost the plot again. "Greg?"

It was a few moments before his mind caught up with the fact that that was his name. "Yeah?"

The Miracle – _his_ Miracle – hesitated. "Can I kiss you?"

At this his brain gave up completely with a small _blam_ like the blowing of a fuse. "Oh, God, please."

His phone rang.

He wondered if there was a God, and if he'd somehow managed to offend Him, and if this was his punishment. Had it been the jazzy notes of a private call, he would have thrown the phone across the restaurant and ignored it. But it was the official ring of the Yard; more specifically, it was Sgt. Sally Donovan. He swore instead.

"Sally, you'd better have a bloody good reason –"

"Sir, someone's broken into the London Penitentiary. We think it was Moriarty. He left a lot of the med-sec prisoners alone, but the SHU was decimated. Sebastian Moran's loose, and Jefferson Hope."

Lestrade swore again, more violently this time. "Why are they calling us?"

Sally's voice was heavy. "Well, sir, they think it's possible Moriarty has teamed up with Holmes."

"Why do they think that? The guy half-strangled Holmes and left him in the middle of the street."

The hand enveloping his disappeared as his Miracle frowned and leaned forwards, attempting to catch the conversation, when his own phone rang, doubtless bearing the same information. He felt a tiny sting of pride that his network, in this at least, appeared to be faster than the Miracle's.

"Irene Adler's loose too, sir."


	12. Of Unpleasant Surprises

**A/N: I wrote this before series 2; as such, the characterisation of Irene Adler is my own.**

* * *

><p>Sherlock gripped the silver handcuffs so tightly they left deep scores in his palm. He wasn't entirely sure what he was going to do when he got inside the warehouse he was standing outside; he'd sort of rushed blindly after Moriarty and Molly until common sense had stopped him from following them inside until he had a definite plan.<p>

Definite plans were usually Sherlock's strong suit; not only did he usually have Molly to ground him when they got too far-fetched, but he usually remained completely impartial and unemotional. This time he didn't have Molly, and that made him unusually emotionally attached. She was terrified, and probably hurt by now. It was his fault.

He'd brought the silver handcuffs knowing they were his only chance. They'd been enough to incapacitate Doctor Watson, and Moriarty shouldn't be as strong as that, considering his superpowers were second-hand. If he had the element of surprise, perhaps he could slip them on; then Sherlock could knock him out. Or call the BrainBots. Or something. He wasn't sure of the details yet.

He heard the sound of breaking glass; it sounded like there was a riot behind him. He wondered if this was Moriarty's fault; perhaps they were sent to make sure no-one was following.

Right. Sherlock threw caution to the winds and entered the warehouse.

The door swung shut behind him; next thing, there was a _click _of it locking and Sherlock spun around to look at the person who had been hiding behind the door, waiting for him.

"Hello, Sherlock."

He couldn't see who it was, but the smooth female voice sounded familiar. And they certainly seemed to think they knew him. He caught a brief whiff of strawberries in the breeze from the door closing. It brought back memories of dark alleyways and wild chases. There was another _click_, and a row of halogen lights flickered on through the warehouse, revealing the woman who stood insouciantly by the door.

"Irene," Sherlock levelled, feeling the smile spread across his face despite himself. "You look good in orange."

It wasn't a colour that suited many people, but the orange Secure Housing jumpsuit somehow managed to look good on Irene Adler, with her exotic eyes and luscious dark curls. She had retained the air of some sort of foreign dancer that she had had when Sherlock first met her; wild and dangerous, but hypnotising and intoxicating. It had come in handy once or twice. Now she smiled, looking for all the world like a normal woman who had just received a compliment. "Thank you. I had some nice silver bangles that complimented it perfectly, but I seem to have lost them along the way."

Sherlock surreptitiously stuffed his own handcuffs back in his pocket. "What a shame." His eyes darted around the warehouse, taking in the line of windows that completely failed to bring light to the room, and the battered-looking fire exit at the other end. If he ran, could he make it out before she could pounce on him and break his neck? Probably not. "So are you taking a holiday, then?"

She shook out her curls like she was in a shampoo advert. "I like to think I'm moving house permanently."

He chuckled. "Fair enough. So Jim Moriarty let you out?" She grinned wolfishly back at him.

"Me and the rest of the SHU. And half the med-sec unit. Can you hear them running through the streets, plundering and raping and pillaging like the good old days?" The sounds of breaking glass and screaming drifted back to them again. Not a riot, then. "He smashed a hole right through the med-sec mess hall and yelled out, 'go make a mess' to them."

Sherlock shuddered. Irene laughed. "But not you?" he asked, trying to maintain his air of amused composure and familiarity.

She shook her head. "Of course he wanted me to work with him. You and me, Sherlock, we were the greatest. Don't you remember?"

"They were good times," he agreed. "So why would you side with _him_ now?"

She frowned, leaning against the wall of the warehouse. "He said you were joining him," she said. "I could have refused him. He said you just needed some persuasion. I've always been good at persuasion." He chuckled again, remembering that Irene's form of persuasion either involved a knife or a short skirt, usually depending on the gender of the person needing to be persuaded.

Then he frowned. "He just kidnapped my assistant. Is that supposed to be persuasion?"

Irene adopted a mournful expression. "Was she my replacement?"

Sherlock smiled. "I gave up trying to replace you when I realised it couldn't be done." She flashed him a smile back. "But, Irene, I won't work with Jim. You should work with me _against_ him instead."

Her smile turned sad. "Can't do that, Sherlock. Sorry." She tossed her proud head again and unlocked the door. "Jim?" she called loudly. Sherlock found himself shrinking backwards as the door swung open and none other than James Moriarty sauntered in, same cocky little smirk on his face as he beheld Sherlock.

"Hey, Sherlock," he greeted calmly.

Sherlock snarled. "What the hell have you done with Molly?" he asked. Moriarty held up his hands in mock-surrender.

"Well, she's mine, Sherlock, remember? She doesn't want _you._ Touching, though – do you really love her?" Sherlock couldn't help the slight twitch of his nose that gave him away; he _did_ love Molly, in a platonic way. She was the closest thing to a friend he'd had since Irene was arrested. Moriarty laughed. "Just give me time, Sherlock. I will burn the heart out of you, piece by agonising piece."

Sherlock stuck out his tongue childishly, eliciting a giggle from Irene. As the Irish mastermind frowned at the juvenile behaviour, Sherlock pounced; before either of them had a chance to react, he looped the chain of the cuffs around Moriarty's neck. The Irishman started to laugh again. Sherlock kneed him in the small of the back. "I don't know what you think you have to laugh at, _Professor_," he spat. Irene started forwards; Sherlock used his elbows to hold Moriarty in place while he whistled piercingly for the Brainbots.

The windows crashed inwards in a flood of broken glass, and a multitude of spindly robots descended on Irene Adler, hiding her from sight until her shrill protests silenced. Sherlock smiled grimly. Moriarty laughed. "I don't know what you think you have on me, Sherlock," he said, his melancholy voice filled with empty mirth.

London's infamous supervillain transferred the cuffs to Moriarty's wrists. "They're made of silver, Jim," he said gloatingly. "The very same metal used to defeat Doctor Watson."

Jim Moriarty shrugged him off, still smiling, his hands still bound together. At his unwavering eyes, still burning with suppressed fire, Sherlock felt the first flicker of doubt. Moriarty chuckled.

"You should stop comparing me to Doctor Watson," he chided gently, and with an innocous flick of his wrists, snapped the silver cuffs as though they were blades of grass.

* * *

><p>The London Penitentiary was a mess. The huge stone building – depressing at the best of times – now resembled the ruins of Hadrian's Wall, crumbling and desolate, the litter that no-one had been brave enough to pick up since Sherlock Holmes' takeover blowing morosely through the rubble.<p>

The inmates that had been left behind were making an inordinate amount of noise; Lestrade imagined they'd be furious. He stood with his Miracle in the newly empty Secure Housing Unit, all the whitewashed, reinforced doors bent out of shape and the pipes wrenched out of the walls. They stopped at the cell still bearing the white label _Irene Adler_ in the slot beside the severely deformed door. Lestrade sighed.

"You've no idea how long it took us to catch that."

He'd arrested the thief himself, nine years ago, after eighteen months of chasing shadows. She'd been working with Sherlock Holmes, which was why it was his task force that had been given the job. He'd only been a Constable back then, and his Inspector had been a tubby and fairly useless bloke who sent everyone else to do his job for him and then took the credit himself. Holmes and Adler had been the romantic couple of the century according to a million women's magazines, London's 'husband and wife crime duo'. Nobody cared that they weren't married, or that after her arrest she had claimed to have had no romantic interest in Holmes whatsoever; tehy made the perfect couple, and so a couple they must have been. Lestrade had been swamped by hungry _Vogue _reporters desperate for a photo of her. She was worth all the photography too, appearance-wise. The 'Adler' hairstyle had come into fashion in a big way; thick, sweeping dark curls accosted him everywhere he went. He'd been a bit of a celebrity. Actually, he'd almost quit.

A warm hand slipped into his as the two of them stood together at her door; Lestrade clutched at his Miracle's fingers as they stepped over the prone body of a Corrections officer together. He felt slightly juvenile, holding hands like teenagers on a first date, but it was a comfort to know he was there, and a definite sign that the Miracle was interested in him. It felt… well, it felt nice.

The next door was completely ripped off its hinges and thrown down the hallway. Lestrade guessed that this was the prisoner who had killed the guard. The label beside the door read _Sebastian Moran._

Lestrade had never dealt with Moran, but everyone in London had heard of him, and probably the rest of the world by now. He'd been a soldier in Afghanistan when the war had first started. The stories of his slaughtering innocent Afghan children had been jumped on and escalated by the media until he was more famous than Richard Curtis. They were going to have a field day when they discovered his escape; Lestrade doubted they'd have long to wait.

A tinny reproduction of Chopin's _Fantasie_ wafted through the air as he remembered the media frenzies; he looked around in surprise, thinking it was coming from one of the cells, until he finally managed to pinpoint the sound to the Miracle's waistcoat pocket. His long-fingered hand dipped into the pocket and withdrew an extremely fancy smart-phone. Lestrade's heart leapt momentarily as he waited for the man to answer it with his name, then remembered he was probably smarter than that.

"Tell me you have news, Jane."

The DI couldn't hear the woman's response and his Miracle's face was inscrutable. He wondered how many people could read the timbre of his silky voice in the way he could, wondered how many people had been allowed to get that close, and felt like the luckiest man alive.

Then the Miracle frowned. "Again? That is most uncharacteristic. After the Hooper girl?" Lestrade's brain sleepily connected 'Hooper' with Holmes' stooge, Molly. "I suppose that's some form of progress, at least. Thank you, Jane. I shall inform Detective Inspector Lestrade immediately." The Miracle turned back to him. "Sherlock Holmes has somewhat foolishly attempted to capture Moriarty on his own. He and Irene Adler are currently incapacitated. I have a car on its way presently to take us to the scene; I'm sure one of them, at least, will return to Scotland Yard with you."

Lestrade needed a while longer to process that one. "Wait. Holmes tried to _capture_ Moriarty? What was he going to do with him then? I thought Holmes and Moriarty were working together?"

"Good heavens, no, although Sherlock's motives escape me almost as much as they do you," the Miracle replied, the touch of light-hearted sarcasm back in his voice. "Come along, Gregory, there is a car waiting for us outside."

Lestrade wasn't quite sure how legal the speed of the car was, but considering the activity in the streets around them – where the med-sec prisoners had flocked, breaking shop windows and setting things on fire – he decided not to comment. It took mere minutes before they stopped outside a warehouse and his Miracle tugged on his hand to get out of the car.

Inside the dimly-lit warehouse there was broken glass sprayed all over the concrete floors from where something had smashed in through the windows; it took a while before Lestrade's eyes adjusted enough to realise that the flashing lights he was seeing came from several spidery robots hunched in a corner, and a few more seconds to recognise the two figures they were draped over and cuddling up to in an almost catlike way.

Irene Adler was propped up against the wall, gagged and bound so that she could barely move, still dressed in her orange jumpsuit with her curls hanging unruly around her face. Her dark eyes bored into Lestrade with a fervour that clearly said she recognised him from their last meeting. Curled up in her lap, barely conscious, was Sherlock Holmes. At the light from the door, he flinched and pressed his face into Adler's legs, then seemed to regain some sense of where he was and recoiled, struggling to sit up.

The Miracle bent to him, but was violently thrown off. "Piss off," he muttered.

It was the first time Lestrade had ever seen Holmes look defeated; the man he had been chasing for most of his professional life had always been a fount of vivid, sarcastic energy. He was long and stringy, his skin milky white and sharply contrasting with his dark curls and black clothes. He was striking, even the DI had to admit, in a sort of a dangerous way, like an exotic viper. Something about him was otherworldly, almost alien. In his present pose he looked so childlike and vulnerable it was hard to believe he was facing the man he'd wasted so many late nights trying to keep in jail, batting off the Miracle's attempts to check the bruise already forming on his pristine forehead like a child shrugging off his mother.

"Sherlock," the Miracle muttered, finally admitting defeat and taking a step back. "What were you thinking?"

Sherlock Holmes shook his head as though trying to clear it, then pushed a few robots off his lap and stood. "I thought I could – I _should _have been able to stop him! Why didn't the silver work? The silver worked _impeccably _last time!" He appeared to be ranting more to himself than to either of them, but eventually he fell into sullen, still silence.

The Miracle glared at Holmes for a few seconds, and Holmes drew himself up to a reasonably formidable height and glared daggers back, suddenly in control again. Lestrade began to feel somewhat left out of their little chain as the two men's world obviously narrowed to the two of them. "Gregory," the Miracle said softly, "I suggest you arrest Miss Adler while she is tied up in front of you."

Lestrade remembered the woman in front of him and hurried to do what he was told, yanking her unceremoniously to her feet; Holmes' fine-boned face split into a sneer. "_Gregory?_" he spat incredulously, and his voice was a deep, mocking baritone. "I didn't know you were on first name terms with the Detective Inspector, _Mycroft."_

Lestrade's mind wiped instantaneously blank. _Mycroft. _He knew that name, of course he knew it; it was on at least half the files he'd thumbed through over and over. _Mycroft Holmes._

He was Sherlock's _brother_. He'd been so wound up in the fact that his mysterious phone-caller could be Sherlock Holmes himself he hadn't even considered the possibility that it could be someone _working_ with him. God, he'd been so stupid! How the man must have laughed at him, at his pathetic attempts at flirting over the phone, at his doubts and confessions. Every little moment came back to him; all the times over the past two days he'd spent in _Mycroft Holmes' _company where he'd said how relieved he was that he could see now that he wasn't dealing with Sherlock Holmes in disguise. How _pathetic_ Mycroft must have thought him, how easily fooled.

He felt sick. He turned back to the man – to Mycroft – his mouth open in undignified shock. "You're _Mycroft Holmes?_" he said, unable to keep the hurt out of his voice. Mycroft wouldn't meet his eyes, a steady flush overtaking his cheeks.

Sherlock Holmes laughed, low and cruel. "Oh, Inspector, you didn't know? He didn't tell you he's the brother of the man you've been pathetically trailing after since you got your badge? _Interesting."_

Mycroft took a hesitant step towards him. "Gregory, I –"

With another floundering open-and-shut movement of his mouth, Detective Inspector Gregory Lestrade shoved Irene Adler out into the weather and dashed as quickly as he could out of the building and into the car, trying not to show the criminal he was chaperoning the hot tears of betrayal that were squeezing painfully out of his eyes.


	13. Exodus

The rain started as Sherlock legged it back to Baker Street; by the time he burst into the upstairs bedroom and began pacing furiously he was flicking water over Doctor Watson at every about turn.

John was less than impressed, but he said nothing. He continued to say nothing as Sherlock finally fell still and stared at him for a long moment, dripping steadily into a puddle so big it was surely soaking through the floor and dripping away downstairs; he said it right up until Sherlock pulled a syringe from a drawer and started advancing on him with it. Then he broke silence.

"Whoa. What are you doing with that?"

The supervillain – looking super villainous with the needle in his hand – glanced at it distractedly. "I need to find out what I did wrong," he said, as though it were obvious. "For the silver not to have worked on Moriarty I must have made a mistake in the transfusion. I need your blood to work out what that mistake was and how I can fix it." He took another step forwards, which caused the doctor to retreat hurriedly until he was backed into the corner.

"Hang on," he said quickly, with the air of one running from a bull in a ring. "Have you ever used a hypodermic before? Is that _sterile?_ I think you should calm down a little bit before you jam that in my arm."

Sherlock shook his head in irritation. "There's no time! It's sterile, I promise. He has Molly, and he's going to do worse. It could be Mycroft next, he'll hurt them, I have to do something!" John held his hands up in supplication. "I tried to stop him with the silver handcuffs, like I did to you at the Abbey, but it didn't work. Quickly, John! I have to find out why it didn't work!"

To Sherlock's consternation, John's face sort of crumpled a little at the recollection of what had happened, his whole manner deflating a little. "I don't think a blood sample is going to help that, Sherlock."

He shook his head, flicking more water in the doctor's eyes, and changed tactic. "Honestly, Doctor Watson, anyone would think you were afraid of needles. You're a doctor. It's just a bit of blood, come on."

John drew himself up to his full and thoroughly unimpressive height and metaphorically put his foot down. He couldn't do it literally because he was crouched like a child at the head of the bed, pressed against the wall. "Stop right there," he said firmly. Sherlock, a little shocked, stopped right there. "If you're going to force a hypodermic into my arm and experiment on my blood, I have some conditions." Sherlock blinked. "First of all, I insist on giving you a medical check. You've had two blows to the head in the past few days, not to mention been strangled into unconsciousness. If the fate of London _really_ rests on you, you're not allowed to suddenly collapse because you have a concussion you wouldn't let anyone look at. And second of all," he reached out and snatched the syringe out of Sherlock's slack hand. "_I'll_ do that. I'm qualified, you're not."

Sherlock glared at him reproachfully, not quite managing to resent the little smug smile on the doctor's face. That motherly little outburst had been quite unexpected. "As long as you talk me through it, in case I need to do it in the future," he countered warningly. Doctor Watson grinned.

"Done. Now come here." Sherlock swallowed heavily; John was actually asking to _touch_ him. The edges of his limbs went slightly weak; it was disconcerting how badly he wanted to give himself over to the doctor and let himself be taken care of. "Come on. I just want to check you for concussion and look at those bruises – you've been leaning to the left a bit, too, so I want to check your ribs for bruising." John's face softened into something – was that a _tender_ expression? "Trust me, Sherlock. I'm a doctor."

Sherlock wondered if it was strange that he _did_ trust Doctor Watson, considering the amount of time they had spent being nemeses. But when he looked at Moriarty, calling John an enemy seemed foolish. Their rivalry had never been anything like this; they had been, in reality, children playing pranks on each other in the playground.

_How different, really, are our enemies from our friends?_

Mycroft had asked him that question once, when he was younger and childishly vindictive. He'd been shocked, thinking it was blindingly obvious. He liked his friends, and he _hated_ Mycroft. Now he was older – now he had _John_ – he understood what he had meant. When he had allowed himself the opportunity to spend time with John without blowing something up or kidnapping his girlfriend, they had made the incredible shift from enemies to _this_ without even realising it was happening. Now they were almost friends.

Sherlock crawled forwards on the bed until John could take his head in his calloused military hands and prod it gently. The dark-haired man winced as the doctor's fingers skated over the bruises where Moriarty had beaten him almost senseless. John exhaled a long breath and Sherlock felt it play with his curls on its way out. "How could someone do this to you?" the doctor whispered.

Even in the fiercest of their battles, neither of them had ever really _hurt_ the other. There had been a few well-timed punches on John's part every now and then, but they had been soundly intended to knock out, not to cause the pain that each of Moriarty's blows had. Their war had been one of intellect, of Sherlock devising new and fantastic mazes for John to navigate, most of which John blasted straight through instead. When he thought about it, maybe it had been like _this_ all along, and it had just taken the death of Doctor Watson for him to realise it.

"John?" he murmured; the movements of those strong hands on his scalp were making him sleepy. "I'm not sorry I killed you. Not anymore."

John chuckled. "Okay. What's your full name, today's date, your birthday, your brother's full name and what day is Christmas?"

Sherlock sat up again, rolling his eyes. "I'm Sherlock Emrys Holmes, it's the thirteenth of December, Christmas is the twenty-fifth but my birthday's not until the seventeenth of July. I usually deny that I have a brother, but for the purposes of this interrogation I'm assuming you mean Mycroft Adwin Holmes, the government worker who follows me around on CCTV."

Another chuckle from the doctor. "All right. Follow my finger with your eyes." He waved his index finger around for a bit, then rested it in his lap. Sherlock kept his eyes on it in a contrary fashion and found himself staring at John's crotch. He stopped. "Okay. You don't have a concussion. Anyone else I'd prescribe a long rest and avoidance of strenuous activity. You I know will ignore that, so I won't bother. Now come closer so I can check your ribs." Sherlock obediently wriggled closer and held his arms out from his body while the doctor resumed his poking.

"Ouch."

John had touched a spot that had sent sharp pains lancing up his chest and caused him to double over slightly. He frowned. "Sorry. How bad was it?"

"Bad," Sherlock testified sullenly. "It _hurt_." John touched it again. "Ouch!"

The army doctor actually _giggled_. "Well, it's not broken. Same advice as before." He sat back against the headboard and Sherlock relaxed slightly. Then he remembered why he was in such a hurry.

"Thank you, _Doctor_," he mocked gently. "Now can you do the hypodermic? Quickly?"

John reached back for the syringe and pushed the sleeve of his jumper up past his elbow, showing the blue vein in the crook of his arm. "Right," he said matter-of-factly. "You can see the vein, right? Good. You're supposed to use a tourniquet but my sleeve will do for now." He presented the syringe with the bevel facing Sherlock. "Hold it bevel up and insert it into the vein. You can usually feel the moment it goes in, it makes a kind of _pop_ feeling."

Sherlock watched in fascination as the doctor pulled back on the plunger a little bit and was rewarded with a spurt of blood in the syringe. "If you're injecting with something, you pull back anyway to check you're in a vein," John explained. "If you're just taking blood, you go full steam ahead." He pulled the plunger steadily back until the syringe was full. "Then you make sure the bevel is still facing outwards, and take out the needle." He did so, holding the silvery spike upwards and bending his elbow. "Here you go."

Sherlock took the syringe full of blood and watched as John pulled down his sleeve and clutched at his elbow where the needle had gone in to stem the blood flow. "Thanks." John waved him away, suddenly looking tired. Sherlock, feeling somewhat awkward, got up and made to leave.

"Sherlock?" The doctor was sitting on the edge of the bed when Sherlock turned around; he opened and closed his mouth a few times, clearly struggling with whether or not to say something. Eventually he closed it and sighed. "Nothing. Good luck."

* * *

><p>Detective Inspector Lestrade, it seemed fair to say, was having the worst day of his life. He didn't think he could ever possibly have worse. Throwing Irene Adler back into custody had not alleviated the day even <em>slightly<em>, mostly because it was the same day she'd escaped. He'd run all over London in the rain from the Penitentiary to the Yard to the many scenes of destruction in the streets and not been able to do a thing about any of the situations he'd seen in their various stages of unfolding. He'd discovered that the man he'd slowly fallen in love with over the phone had been a fake and a phony and Sherlock Holmes' brother.

Now he was in the Chief Inspector's office talking to the Prime Minister and attempting to sanction a complete evacuation of London.

Things were not going well.

To be fair, the PM was being extremely understanding. Well, he was adopting an extremely understanding façade while effectively blaming Lestrade for the break-out and the riots _and_ Jim Moriarty and refusing to co-operate with his suggestions that maybe it'd be better if they all abandoned-ship for a while until the whole thing had calmed down.

Lestrade would be the first to admit that he was getting a little frustrated. "Sir," he persisted, "Moriarty has already trashed the London Penitentiary. We have about fifty separate riots on our hands with all the arsonists, robbers and rapists walking the streets. You were worried when Sherlock Holmes took over, sir. I promise you the situation is _already_ a million times worse than that. We need to evacuate _now_."

The Prime Minister, a short, sallow-faced man with enormous jowls for one so skinny, scowled at him. "I still don't understand how the Yard has allowed the situation to escalate to this, Detective Lestrade."

"It's Detective _Inspector_ Lestrade, sir," he said through gritted teeth, hoping to convey a little more authority. "And with all necessary respect, the man has _superpowers_. He can _fly_. New Scotland Yard is just not equipped to deal with this and I don't see any way we can quickly and effectively remedy that. Please trust that this is the only way."

The PM cast an uncertain glance towards Chief Inspector Andrews, sitting calmly behind his desk. "Doug," the CI said firmly, his deep, round voice resonating sweetly in the glass office, "he's right."

"Didn't you actually _have_ this Moriarty in your _office_ at some point, Lestrade?" the PM snapped. Lestrade took a deep breath.

"We believed he might be able to help us to defeat Sherlock Holmes," he said stoically.

The Chief Inspector looked at him. "We?"

Lestrade suddenly felt choked with tears, struggling to breathe, trying desperately to look as though nothing had changed. _We_ in this case had not meant him and Sgt Sally Donovan, and the CI knew it. _We _in this case had been him and his – and Mycroft.

Mycroft had encouraged him to let Moriarty do what he wanted. Did that mean that Holmes and Moriarty were in cahoots after all? Had this whole thing been a carefully-orchestrated lie? And yet, giving Moriarty free reign had resulted in Sherlock being hurt, twice. Was that all faked? Or was the situation even more twisted and out-of-control than he could imagine?

He tried to regulate his breathing before the others noticed. "Yes, sir. The rest of the task force was sceptical – and rightly," he added before the PM could shoot off again. "But we were slightly desperate. We've always been somewhat out of our depth in this investigation." They said honesty was the best policy.

Chief Inspector Andrews' desk phone rang shrilly. He waved at them to continue and picked it up. Lestrade sighed. "Sir, I know it's not ideal. But not taking this step is endangering the population of London. Wouldn't you rather be the leader that caused a major inconvenience than the leader who refused to do anything –"

"Lestrade," the CI interrupted. He turned around to see Andrews holding out the phone. "It's for you."

Frowning, he took it. "DI Lestrade," he said questioningly. There was a brief pause.

"Inspector."

_Oh, God. _Lestrade's knees went weak and his whole body began trembling violently. He thought he might be sick, and clutched at Andrews' desk to keep himself upright, knowing his face would have turned ashen and hating himself for the display of weakness in front of his superior. And the _Prime Minister_, for God's sake.

Without saying a word into the phone, he replaced the receiver on the cradle firmly, hanging up the phone. Both men looked at him curiously. "Who was that?"

Lestrade blinked a few times. Then he looked up at the security camera in the far corner of the room, suddenly remembering that Mycroft had been uncannily able to watch him wherever he went. How had he not managed to find that creepy? "Sir, I think we may be being watched."

The PM looked around in shock. "What? How?"

"The security cameras," the DI explained. He looked at Chief Inspector Andrews. "Sir, I know for a fact that Sherlock Holmes has access to the security feeds from Scotland Yard, and I believe CCTV footage as well. That," he nodded towards the phone, "was his brother, Mycroft."

The Prime Minister sat down heavily and put his head in his hands. "It's really that bad, isn't it?" he asked tiredly. Neither police officer said anything. "All right, Detective Inspector," he said finally. "Issue the evacuation notice and start helping people out."

Andrews stood up. "There's a press conference arranged at three," he said, and led the way out of the office.

Lestrade's cellphone rang on the way out; when he didn't recognise the number, he hung up without answering it.

* * *

><p>Sherlock sat on a stool at St Bart's, peering in consternation down a microscope. The syringe of Doctor Watson's blood he had sealed, labelled, and stored in a box in the cupboard marked <em>Molly Hooper. <em>In front of him was a discarded syringe of his own blood, three test-tubes of something congealed and yellow, and two identical-looking slides under the microscope.

He'd been staring at these slides for the past ten minutes, since he had recreated _exactly_ the solution he had injected into Jim Moriarty and imbibed the sample of his own blood with it. Usually Sherlock never devoted so much time to something that could have been done in seconds; theoretically, he should only have had to glance at the slides to see what was wrong.

But the two blood samples – the one he had taken from John and the one he had taken from himself and modified – were exactly the same.

Well, not _exactly_ the same, one was very distinctly John and the other was quite obviously Sherlock, but the deoxyribonucleic patterns that made up the abilities characteristic of Doctor Watson were the same. From this sample, if John was vulnerable to the apparent effects of silver, then Moriarty should be, too.

Sherlock pulled the slides out of the microscope and threw them irritably onto the bench with just enough care so as not to break them, running his hands through his dishevelled hair and kneading his eyes with his palms.

Then, just as suddenly, he sat up with an abrupt intake of breath, grabbed the syringe and started a new experiment. If he couldn't figure out _why_ Moriarty was invulnerable to the thing that caused Doctor Watson's downfall, he'd just have to try something else.

* * *

><p>"In light of recent events, including the destruction of and breakout from the London Penitentiary caused by Professor James Moriarty, I am declaring a state of emergency over the city. We think that the safest route for citizens is to evacuate immediately and we will be distributing units around the city to help residents do so safely. We can confirm the reports that Moriarty has somehow acquired the abilities hitherto only seen by the late Doctor John Watson, and therefore caution people to stay well away from areas they may believe to be unsafe and under no circumstances attract his attention or that of his followers. We cannot confirm whether Sherlock Holmes is involved in this attack but there have been no official sightings that connect him with Moriarty. Any questions?"<p>

Lestrade sighed as a million hands shot up. He'd always hated press conferences. There were always so many questions he couldn't reasonably be expected to know the answers to. "Yes? Shall we start with you?" He pointed at a lady in the front row.

"How long can you expect such an evacuation to last? Are the police doing _anything_ to stop this Moriarty?"

He rolled his eyes. "Well, obviously we're doing as much as we can, but there's no way we can safely combat a man with superpowers and an army of criminals at his disposal. I'm afraid evacuating the city _is_ the only option, and it is not a situation we ever thought we would be facing. We're not sure how long it might last, but we urge people to take only what is necessary with them and to treat it as a temporary movement only."

Sally Donovan coughed slightly; when he turned to look at her she held out her cellphone, indicating that he should read the text scrolling across the screen. He excused himself to the press.

_Please inform Detective Inspector Lestrade that the situation is not what it appears to be and that I would appreciate the opportunity to explain myself. M._

He tried to look angry. He tried to tell himself he didn't want to hear what Mycroft had to say. But he couldn't help himself thinking that maybe the government official had some sort of excuse that could make all of this necessary and worthwhile, make the betrayal not so bad. He desperately wanted the chance to forgive him, and he hated himself for it.

He took the phone; Sally shifted forwards and assumed control of the press conference. "I apologise for Detective Inspector Lestrade, but naturally he is extremely busy orchestrating the evacuation. Allow me to take your questions in his stead."

Lestrade shot her a grateful smile and turned his back on the mass of the media. _If there's something you have to say that will make an evacuation unnecessary, you need to come forward and say it. L._

He tapped Sally's phone impatiently on his knee. _Please_. Please let this whole thing be a misunderstanding, let this whole farce just be a wild imagining brought on by not enough sleep.

_Unfortunately that is not the situation I meant. I was referring to the situation between you and I, which I am aware I seem to have botched royally. M._

A mere moment after the text arrived, the phone started to ring; Lestrade pressed the _ignore_ button.

_I don't want to talk to you. L._

He sat up, sighing, and Donovan handed him back the microphone.

* * *

><p>Sherlock intently watched the mouse he had managed to lure into the lab with peanut butter and inject with superpowers. He was a little apprehensive that it might go rabid and become dangerous, but so far it seemed peaceful; all it had done was break the jar of peanut butter and singe a few holes in the desk.<p>

It was also apparently impervious to silver. So far, so good; it was Jim Moriarty in rodent-form. Sherlock managed to pick it up by the back of its neck, but showing incredible strength – duh – it wrestled its way loose again.

Hmm.

After a few more failed attempts to capture it, he finally managed to get it in a position where it couldn't reach him with its legs or teeth. Panting, Sherlock picked up the hypodermic on the bench and slid it into the rodent's neck. The animal emitted a high-pitched and very loud scream as he gently pushed at the plunger and injected a second solution into its veins; its struggles against his fingers became dramatically less and less painful.

Within seconds, it was a normal mouse again. Sherlock crowed in delight, feeling slightly giddy. He'd done it. He was actually able to reverse the effects of his first experiment.

A syringe of the slightly green and gross-looking liquid clutched in his hand, Sherlock ran out of St Bart's as fast as he could. If he could get back to Baker Street, he could allow himself a breather and calm down enough to find Moriarty and make a proper plan. Mycroft had informed him of Lestrade's plan to evacuate the city, and he had to admit it seemed the best solution. But things would be uncomplicated immensely if he could finish this before the evacuation was complete.

As he ran, he thought about John. What would he do if he couldn't defeat Moriarty? He couldn't just leave Doctor Watson locked in a room by himself to starve. Could he trust the doctor to help him? Or even not to just defeat him again if he let him go?

And if his 'cure' worked on Moriarty, was there a chance that it might also work on John? It seemed unlikely, given that it was designed to attack the _foreign_ DNA in the blood, and John was the source. And yet, all of Sherlock's tests had shown that John was essentially human – could it be that he was the product of someone's twisted experimentation as well? He could offer, at least, to try it. If John still wanted a 'normal life', Sherlock would give it to him, even if it hurt.

He was quickly coming to realise he'd do almost anything for Doctor Watson. As he rounded the corner into Baker Street, his eyes flickered to the window and he could see a flash of the back of the doctor's sandy head as he sat, probably tapping away at the laptop. Sherlock wasn't sure what he was doing on there, but he seemed to be writing something.

He made up his mind. When he got inside, he would tell John Watson everything; how he'd created Moriarty because he'd been so desperate to feel again what he'd felt around the doctor, so wild with missing _John_; how he felt now, like he never wanted to give the doctor up again, how he _needed_ him, _loved_ him; how he didn't want to leave him there in case he was walking out to his death, because even if Sherlock wasn't there to miss him he couldn't bear it if he killed John again; how he was willing to try to 'cure' the doctor if that was what he wanted, how he would give him whatever he wanted for ever and ever.

If John wanted him, John wanted him. If not, it would hurt, but he was used to it. He'd chosen the role of the villain right from the start; he knew by now that the villain was not the one who rode off into the sunset with his every romantic aspiration filled. That was tough, but it was too bad.

He stopped before the door to 221B, doubled over, gasping like a dying man, his heart racing, trying to calm himself down. He needed to be able to speak the words rationally, needed to prepare himself for failure –

Without warning, Sherlock felt a rough jerk on his orchid-petal collar and then he was being lifted into the air, struggling to breathe, while a familiar low melancholy laugh in his ears and the ground falling away underneath him. He tried to twist around; Jim Moriarty's gleeful face grinned wickedly at him. "Hello, darling."

Sherlock knew better than to struggle, not this high off the ground; but his rough jerking away from Moriarty's face dislodged the syringe from the inside pocket of his cloak and it fell, down and down until he could no longer track it with his eyes.

As he was pulled further and further away, his only thought was for what he hadn't managed to do; all of his being poured quite accidentally out of him as he opened his mouth and screamed.

"_Joooooooohn!"_


	14. The Rooftop Scene

Detective Inspector Lestrade had never been called impatient. Many other insults had been thrown his way, but _impatient_ was never one of them. That was probably why he was the one helping the elderly Northumberland Street resident into the people-mover with her neighbours, one shaky step on a zimoframe at a time, while Sergeant Sally Donovan stood at the end of the street barking orders to the rest of the unit assigned to clear this area, deemed to be one of the most dangerous because of its proximity to Baker Street. It was this patience that had led him to dedicatedly press the 'ignore' button on his – and Sally's, and often that of the strangers around them – phone every five or so minutes.

Mycroft Holmes didn't cry very often. But with this intense patience of Gregory Lestrade's, and the stubborn streak, and the pure _tenderness_ with which he was guiding the old lady into the van, he was sure as hell crying now.

Why did Sherlock have to ruin _everything_? Couldn't he just have let his own brother have this one thing to himself, this one moment of happiness, without sticking out his leg to trip him up like a child in a hallway?

He still remembered the look on the DI's face – complete and utter betrayal. He thought Mycroft had betrayed him, thought he'd been working _with_ Sherlock, not struggling to work against him, thought every word he'd spoken had been a lie. Mycroft was no expert with relationships, but he knew he'd messed this one up pretty badly. And he had no idea how he might go about fixing it.

He tried calling Gregory again, but once again the Detective Inspector dutifully hung up without answering. Another tear slipped down Mycroft's face. What was he supposed to do? He _needed_ Gregory, needed him to forgive him, to listen, to let him explain. How was he supposed to do that when the DI wouldn't answer his phone, wouldn't talk to him or listen to him or even acknowledge his existence? Was Gregory hurting even nearly as badly as Mycroft was?

There was a clamour outside; Mycroft just had time to wipe his eyes and sniff hurriedly before Jane burst through the door, her hair wild, her usual composure completely gone. Irritation trickled through him. "Jane," he reprimanded sternly. "I hardly need to remind you to knock before you enter a room."

"Sorry, sir," she panted quickly, not sounding it at all. "It's just – I thought you should know quickly – Moriarty's got Sherlock, sir. He snatched him off the road in Baker Street."

Mycroft was filled at once with despair and anger and resentment and the sensation that today was really most emphatically _not_ his day. "How long ago was this?" he asked, standing up and switching off the monitor, startled into action.

"About ten minutes, sir. He kicked in the CCTV cameras as he arrived, so we had to wait for the ground reports." He nodded sharply, picking up his jacket.

"Do we know where he took him?" He took the file she was handing him as they hurried out the door.

She smiled grimly. "Yes, sir. They're on the roof of the Admin block at New Scotland Yard."

She bundled him into a car as he wondered why the people who called themselves 'supervillains' insisted on conducting their business on rooftops. Maybe it made them feel scarier because of the number of people who suffered from acrophobia. "New Scotland Yard," Jane barked at the driver.

Mycroft forced himself out of his reverie. "No," he said quickly. "Northumberland Street." His assistant threw him a sceptical look; she knew that was where Gregory was. He should have cared that she thought him so pathetic, but he didn't. He wasn't sure that was scorn in her eyes anyway; it looked more like pity. "We're going to need help," he tried to explain. But it was more than that. They were going to need a hero, and Gregory Lestrade was the most heroic person he knew. Jane sighed and turned back to her BlackBerry.

Nerves attacked his stomach with all the ferocity of a wild tiger. A fierce one. He wasn't at all sure what Detective Inspector Lestrade would do when he saw him climbing out of the car, and was even less sure that he wouldn't deserve being shot with the standard-issue handgun he carried around. But he had to do this for Sherlock's sake, and for London's sake. And for his own sake. He was pretty sure by this point that he would go mad if Gregory didn't forgive him.

The car slid to a stop beside the people-mover that was still being diligently loaded full of the elderly. Jane looked at him dully. "Good luck," she told him, in all seriousness. Mycroft took a deep breath and tried to resist the urge to vomit as he got out of the car.

Lestrade saw him immediately, but ducked his head firmly and gave no visible indication that he was at all affected by the sight. To a well-trained eye – to _Mycroft's_ eye – his hands shook violently on the carpet-bag he was holding and his eyes stared pointedly at nothing, giving away the distress he was feeling. Mycroft's sick feeling intensified. He had never intended to cause the Inspector this much pain. But how did he _think_ he was going to react, even if he'd found out through Mycroft's own means?

The DI loaded the old lady onto the van and stepped around it to him. "I've said I don't want to talk to you," he said, his voice determined but shaking slightly. Then he turned away.

"I know," Mycroft called after him. "I know, and I don't blame you, but I need your help – please, Gregory!"

Gregory Lestrade turned back to him, fists clenched and trembling. "It's Detective Inspector Lestrade," he said through clenched teeth. "You don't get to call me - and you don't need my help. I needed yours."

"Which I know I entirely failed to give," Mycroft admitted desperately, terrified Detective Inspector Lestrade was going to walk away from him again. "But now I need you – Sherlock –"

"_Sherlock_," Lestrade spat back savagely. "I don't understand. Was he working with Moriarty all along, is that why you wanted me to give him a chance? Is all of this a setup?"

Mycroft realised only then that he had left his umbrella at the office and had nothing to support him. Was _that_ what was making him feel so vulnerable, like a breath of wind would knock him over? Or was it the constant stream of harsh accusations coming from Greg, so many kill-shots fired all in a row? "No," he deferred. "I wanted to – Sherlock shouldn't have – I didn't want you to find out I was connected to him until –"

"Until _what?_ What were you going to do, throw it over your shoulder as you walked away when I'd _served my purpose_?" What hurt the most was the _way_ Gregory was accusing him; soft and dull, as though he had already resigned himself to the hurt and the betrayal, though his fists were clenched in anger.

"Of course not," Mycroft said quietly, all he could manage while he was attempting to restrain the tears in his throat from progressing to his eyes.

Behind them, Jane had leaned forward over the startled-looking chauffer, and was hammering on the black car's horn. Lestrade looked over at it blankly. "Detective Inspector Lestrade," he said, not able to stop his voice cracking slightly on the last syllable at the forced formality, "My brother has been kidnapped by Moriarty and is now on the roof of New Scotland Yard. Please, I _need_ your help. There isn't time for me to attempt to explain my position or my reasons for offering to help you, but I promise you, there _is_ an explanation, and if you'll let me, I'd like to give it to you afterwards."

He swallowed a few times, but it was no good; the dry, painful lump in his throat was there to stay and the tears in his eyes didn't look like they were going anywhere either as the Detective Inspector looked from the car to him and back again, a sceptical expression on his sturdy, beautiful face. Then he looked Mycroft right in the eyes. "Why?" he asked, his voice so quiet as to almost be a whisper.

"Because I need you," he replied, equally quiet. "Every word I ever told you was the truth."

He knew holding his breath as the DI weighed in his mind how likely it was that _this_ was the truth was childish, but he couldn't help doing it anyway. The silence stretched on and on, until eventually he had to suck in a surreptitious breath to keep himself from passing out.

Finally, Gregory sighed defeatedly. "All right," he said, as though disgusted with himself for agreeing. Mycroft almost keeled over in relief. He tried to place a hand on the Detective Inspector's back to guide him into the car, but he was shrugged off with a snarl; instead he settled for sliding into the back seat beside him and knowing that he was close – that he'd agreed to come – that there was hope.

* * *

><p>Sherlock pulled at the Duct Tape that caught his hands together behind him, but all he succeeded in doing was bumping one of the bruises on his head on the satellite dish he was tied to. He wasn't used to this, to being so entirely at someone else's mercy. He was always the one Duct-taping people to landmarks, not the other way around.<p>

Jim Moriarty stood about four feet away from him, not looking at him. In fact, he was staring down at the people dashing in and out of Scotland Yard twenty or so stories beneath them, looking rather bored. His total lack of interest in the proceedings made Sherlock quite angry.

"So you brought me all the way up here to show me the view?" he asked insouciantly, shifting his weight from one foot to the other in irritation and discomfort. Moriarty glanced back at him as though he were a mouse that had vaguely annoyed him, then resumed his absent surveillance. "Well, it's very nice," Sherlock mumbled to himself.

Moriarty smiled. "I brought you here, Sherlock, to try and convince you that you shouldn't try to fight me."

Sherlock looked around. "What, and this is the best you could come up with? Good one." He wriggled a bit more, then sighed. "So what if I refuse again?"

The Irishman shrugged, still not looking at him. "Then I leave you here."

Sherlock was about to reply 'then leave me here' when he remembered John. John, sitting all alone in the upstairs bedroom waiting for Sherlock to bring him lunch, so upset when he'd thought he hurt Sherlock. John, the tiny tyrant in him coming out when Sherlock had tried to stick a hypodermic in his arm, insisting that he cared for him first. _John_. Why did he love him so much? It was neither fair nor fitting. It was going to be the death of him.

Quite literally, apparently. "What happens if I join you, then?"

Moriarty flashed him an insincere smile. "I think it's a little late for that, Sherlock. You see, you were quite rude to me when I offered the first time." Sherlock was barely aware that there was someone behind him, just a flash of recognition before a fist slammed into his head and he saw stars; whoever it was, they knew how to punch. Probably a military history – God, it _hurt._ Moriarty's eyebrows contracted slightly as something in the street below caught his attention; Sherlock couldn't quite see the road, but Moriarty soon explained what he was worried about. "That brother of yours doesn't miss a thing, does he?" he said idly.

"Mycroft?" Sherlock asked dully, breathing deeply, waiting for the ache and the nausea to fade before he tried to see who it was behind him. "Is he here?"

"Mmn," Moriarty hummed in vague amusement. "And he's got himself a new pet. Isn't that nice? Just his type, too, I always imagined he'd go for the short, stocky ones. Makes him feel important, I'd say. Wouldn't you agree?"

Sherlock's brain had gone into achy, agonising overdrive, while the rest of his bodily functions had given up. Short and stocky. _John?_

There was a _clang_ as the hatch-door of internal access to the roof was thrown open. Sherlock cracked something in his back trying to turn around and see who it was; he felt a brief chill as he recognised the small man climbing onto the roof, and a bigger one as he saw who was behind him. The two figures were almost complete opposites; the one clambering out of the trapdoor was small and sort of shrivelled-looking, hunched over into himself, a cruel smile on his weather-beaten face barely visible beneath a huge, hooked nose. He had the air of a man whom life has not been kind to, of one who has turned to crime and dark things because something inside him had snapped. The one behind was tall and broad and startlingly handsome, tanned from weeks in the sun, with even, mannered features and incredibly blue eyes displaying a deceptive look of boyish innocence. Sherlock cringed. Jefferson Hope and Sebastian Moran. Moriarty _had_ gone all -out on his recruiting at the Penitentiary.

"Ah, Jeff," Moriarty greeted in a crude parody of warm friendliness. Neither of them smiled in response. "So nice of you to join us. I don't believe _either_ of you two have met Sherlock Holmes? Sebastian? No? Well, get used to him. He'll be joining us."

"I thought it was too late for that," Sherlock said idly, trying not to shy away from the hungry, predatory look Sebastian Moran was giving him. "Not that I'm interested in joining you."

Moriarty gasped in exaggerated mock-surprise. "Aren't you? That's funny. Because you will, Sherlock." He waved vaguely at Moran. "But I never said you'd be joining us as a friend."

He didn't even see the fist swing before it had collided with the side of his head again, forcing it back and slamming it into the satellite. Pain exploded between his eyes and blackness gathered at the corner of his vision. His eyes watered. Sherlock blinked a few times to clear his eyes and his head enough to think straight. "No, I don't think I will, thanks," he said politely. This time he anticipated the blow enough to pull his head away from the dish so that the impact only hit one side of his head. He felt blood rush into his mouth and spat it out defiantly.

"Enough." Moran finally looked away from him as a clamour of footsteps on stairs grew louder; Moriarty's melancholy face arranged into a gleeful smile. "Ah," he said brightly. "Here comes your brother now – nice of him to join us, wasn't it?" His face fell back into a slack expression as he looked up at Moran. "Be careful," he ordered. "The shorter one looks like he did martial arts at some point."

_John,_ Sherlock's brain croaked out feebly through the haze of pain. _No, I can't let him get to John._ He didn't have the energy to look around at the noises of the scuffle behind him; he heard a fist _thud_ onto solid flesh, Mycroft's voice cry out in pain, and a deeper, rougher grunt from someone else. _John!_

"Mycroft," he murmured as the two dragged his brother's prone but conscious form around to where he could see it. Moran chuckled, carrying a struggling, kicking, shorter body locked in his arms that was not John, but – "Lestrade?"

The DI stopped struggling and looked at him. "I am _not_ here by choice," he said crossly, glaring at Mycroft. Sherlock, slightly nonplussed, looked at his brother for confirmation; the government official was giving the detective a hurt look.

He looked back up at Sherlock. "Are you all right?" he asked.

Sherlock huffed. "I'm fine," he insisted petulantly. "I was _handling_ the situation." Lestrade's face twisted into something inscrutable; Sherlock felt quite sorry for the way Mycroft had completely screwed him over. The poor man probably had no idea _what_ was going on. He might even think that Sherlock _did_ have the situation fully under control.

But Mycroft knew differently. "I can see that, Sherlock," he said evenly, somehow managing to retain his composure even though he was being pinned to the ground by Jefferson Hope, London's most famous serial killer.

"Yeah, well, you were a great help," he snapped back childishly.

"Ladies," Moriarty intervened smoothly. He looked at Lestrade in amusement, still struggling to kick Moran's shins. "Put them with him," he said to Moran. "They can come too."

Sebastian Moran grimaced as Lestrade managed to land a kick to his kneecap, and somewhat gratefully dragged him over to the satellite. "Come where?" Sherlock asked. "Where are we going?"

"Where are _they_ going?" Moriarty asked, gesturing down at the people on the ground. "It's no fun playing in an empty city, Sherlock, you know that. I'm sure the _masses_ will stay here," he said, frowning in disgust; Sherlock assumed he meant the petty criminals he let out of prison. "But we'll follow the _people_. It seems a shame to deny these two the chance to practise their art again after so long."

Hope chuckled, a dry, empty sound like someone scrunching paper into a ball. Sherlock couldn't stop himself from shuddering convulsively, banging his head on the satellite again. Behind him, Lestrade struggled harder, making it almost impossible for the soldier to control him. Moriarty tutted. "Just knock him out, Sebastian."

Sherlock didn't see what he did, but he heard a high-pitched yelp and a heavy _thud_ of flesh on metal. Mycroft struggled feebly under Hope's weight. "No!" he cried. The sounds of Lestrade struggling stopped abruptly, and Sherlock winced as he heard the hash ripping sound of Duct tape being unrolled.

After a moment, Moran stepped back where Sherlock could see him and the two of them manhandled Mycroft onto his other side and strapped him, somewhat cruelly, so that their hands were touching. Sherlock, suddenly needing his brother's comfort, tried to take his hand, and was shocked when the older man twitched it away, a hard look in his eyes. All his life, Mycroft had been the one struggling to reach out and Sherlock the one shrugging him away. He felt empty suddenly, sharp tears springing to his eyes. "I'm sorry," he whispered to his brother.

Mycroft didn't look at him. "No, you're not," he replied.

He tried again. "I… I didn't realise it meant so much to you," he lied. The government official sent tear-filled eyes his way.

"Yes, you did."

Moriarty sighed exaggeratedly and looked around. "Well," he said abruptly, "I'm getting a bit _bored_ with the situation. How shall we liven things up a bit? Sherlock?"

"You could let me go," he suggested brightly. Moriarty appeared to consider it.

"Hm. An interesting suggestion. Sebastian?"

The burly ex-soldier smiled eerily. "You know what _I _can do," he said, his voice deep and clear, like a church bell, ringing with mirth and pride and cruelty. Moriarty's smile was instantaneous.

"Mmm. A much more appealing option." Moran grinned. "Well, let's try it, shall we? But if I say stop," he continued sternly, "you stop."

"Of course." Moran looked at Sherlock. Sherlock went cold. _Oh. Oh, no. Oh, please…_

Mycroft wriggled around violently, trying stupidly to wriggle free. Sherlock couldn't move, frozen like a rabbit in the middle of the road as the tank that was Sebastian Moran bore down on him. Moran was only just taller than him, but he was much broader and stronger and even in a fair fight, the soldier would have no trouble subduing him. Tied up as he was, there was no struggle Sherlock could put up that he would even notice.

As Moran stepped close enough, Sherlock spat in his face. The bigger man slapped him, so hard his head snapped around and accidentally sprayed blood and spit over Mycroft's face. The elder Holmes flinched, his eyes shut tightly, his lips white.

A strong, military hand fisted in his hair and yanked his head back, eliciting an involuntary yell of pain from Sherlock. He tried to meet the ex-soldier's eyes defiantly, but soon his head had bent out of sight. He could feel hot breath on his neck and he screwed his eyes shut, pleading silently with nobody, _please, oh please oh please please PLEASE…_

Moran bit him. Sherlock whimpered as unusually straight teeth sank into his neck, too hard, breaking the skin, drawing blood, it _hurt_ –

Something cannoned into the bigger man so hard that Sherlock screamed as Moran's teeth tore away from him; so hard that his hulking body was tipped right off the roof and Sherlock could trace the sound of his surprised bellows right down to the _thud_ of his body hitting the pavement at least twenty stories below.

When he dared to open his eyes in relief, it was to find Moriarty frozen as he himself had been moments earlier, his face a comical arrangement of shock and even smidgeons of fear, his mouth open. "What? _You?_"

Doctor Watson smiled calmly. "Me."


	15. In and Out

For a moment, nobody spoke. Sherlock, as usual, was the first one to regain his senses, close his mouth, and coalesce all the random syllables and bits of sentences floating around his head into coherence.

"John? How did you get out of the bedroom?"

Doctor Watson turned and smiled at him. "You know me. I always use the door."

"But it was locked!"

John had the grace to look sheepish. "Er, yeah," he said. "I'll buy you a new one, I promise. I would have been a bit more delicate, only you were in trouble and I…" he trailed off awkwardly and stereotypically scratched at the back of his head.

Sherlock gaped. "But… the silver!"

The doctor's amiable face contorted in – that couldn't have been _guilt?_ He opened his mouth to say something, but Moriarty – irritated at being left out of the conversation – got in before him. "Doctor Watson, lovely as it is to see you, of course, you _are_ supposed to be dead, you know."

John shot the mastermind another calm grin. "My death was grossly exaggerated." His gaze shifted to where Moran had involuntarily taken the leap. "Man, I've been wanting to do that for a long time."

Moriarty grinned. "Yes, I heard you had the pleasure of Colonel Moran's company in Afghanistan. He was quite miffed about you putting a stop to his little escapades."

The doctor grimaced. "Pleasure is _not_ the word."

Beside Sherlock, Mycroft huffed. "If you two are done with your pleasantries, Doctor Watson, the three of us would appreciate your help."

John smiled apologetically and turned back towards them; the moment his back was turned, Moriarty pounced.

"John!"

At Sherlock's shout, John spun around just in time, then leapt and met the criminal in midair, dodging the red stab from his eyes nimbly. Had he the use of his hands, Sherlock would have been biting his nails as Moriarty latched himself onto the doctor's back and began trying to get a purchase on his neck.

Mycroft coughed. "Sherlock, I believe you have some explaining to do. How long have you been hiding Doctor Watson and where on _earth_ were you keeping him?"

Sherlock shifted awkwardly. "Well, I found him in the Abbey about three weeks ago and I locked him in the –"

Sherlock cut off sharpish as he wriggled at an odd sensation from his hands. It was almost like the tape was… no, that was impossible. He cleared his throat matter-of-factly. "I locked him in the spare bedroom at Baker Street." He wriggled his hands again, testing the sensation. It had almost felt like the sweat from the combined pressure of Moran's assault and worrying about John – still locked in incredible combat with Moriarty high in the air – was working on the adhesive in the Duct tape. He wrenched on his arms; the tape creaked and slipped a little.

Aha. Mycroft winced at being elbowed in the side. "Sherlock –"

"Ssh," he cut his brother off. "I can do this. He's distracted, I can get out of this tape and get the hypodermic back."

"Hypodermic?" Sherlock wrenched and twisted at his arms, feeling the tape slip further.

"Yeah – I found a way to fix the problem. To kill the DNA I injected Moriarty with."

There was a wry, melancholy laugh from above them; both Holmes brothers looked up. Doctor Watson had the professor in a headlock, and Moriarty was cackling like the Wicked Witch of the West and taunting him. Sherlock couldn't hear what he was saying, but it seemed to be working; John's face twisted oddly and then went slack, allowing Moriarty to twist around and gain the upper hand. Sherlock couldn't help the little cry of concern as the mastermind punched John in the side of the chest.

At the next tug on his wrists, Sherlock half-screamed as something snapped in his arm and bright pain speared up to his elbow. Taking deep breaths to steel himself, he fell to wriggling his hands and trying to squeeze his fingers as small as possible to fit through the loop of tape. His left hand, still tingling with pain, was irritatingly uncooperative.

Jefferson Hope seemed to have forgotten all about his three prisoners, which suited Sherlock fine. He was standing right at the edge of the roof – which, again, Sherlock wasn't complaining about – and alternating a comical stare between the two superheroes above and the spot where his colleague had fallen below. With his hunched posture, this constant bending back and forth made him look like an unbalanced slinky.

With one last wince and tug that made Sherlock's vision waver and bile rise in his throat, his right hand slipped free, the hairs on the back of his hand tearing off. He smothered his cry of pain and triumph, instead bracing himself against the satellite dish and bringing his foot up slowly, gritting his teeth against the nausea. He tugged the jack-knife from the mantelpiece out of his black boot.

Tears sprang to his eyes as he cut his throbbing left hand free, tearing the skin from the wrist. Every inch of him hurt; all he wanted to do was curl up into a ball and cry.

But he wouldn't cry in front of John, so he bit his lip and started sawing at the tape around Mycroft's hands.

"Have I mentioned that you're a genius?" Mycroft murmured appreciatively as the tape snapped.

Sherlock didn't think he had, actually, not since he was about seven. Usually he would have come back with something biting and cocky, but this time he just frowned. "Don't forget it's my fault you're here at all," he replied darkly. He pressed the knife into Mycroft's hand. "Don't let them know you're loose."

"What about Gregory?"

Sherlock cast a glance at the Detective Inspector. "He's still out cold. It's too dangerous, he'll fall."

With that and a deep breath, and while Hope was still looking down at Moran's body on the pavement, Sherlock darted forwards and shoved the serial killer off the roof.

There was a moment before Hope realised what was happening, and by then it was too late; as he fell, he shrieked, piercing and desperate. Sherlock heard the answering scream of anger from Moriarty as the mastermind looked down, and then the dull _thunk_ as John took advantage of his distraction. Sherlock smirked. He didn't want to leave John or Mycroft with Moriarty, but he had to find the syringe or they were all dead.

He ignored as best he could the agony that came with every movement and the throbbing of his head, and ran to the trapdoor and down the stairs.

He remembered vaguely where the hypodermic had fallen out of his hands, but it was harder than he expected to find the right street from the ground when he had seen it last from mid-air. His brain didn't seem to be working properly; every time he stopped and tried to focus, he was rewarded by a blinding throb from every bruise on his head at the same time. Every time this happened, he staggered and had to lean against a building before he could go on. Twice, he bent and vomited into a gutter from the pain.

He turned into the street two down from the flat panting furiously, but sure it had fallen here – right by that big brick building in the corner.

Sherlock looked around wildly, then more carefully when his initial search was unsuccessful. He scrambled frantically around the corner but there was nothing there either; in the absence of any sign of the syringe, Sherlock started to panic.

He was _so_ aware that he could quite easily have the wrong street and he would never know, would most likely _never_ find the right one. It could be _anywhere_, or broken, or on a rooftop somewhere and he didn't have time to go back to St. Bart's and get another syringe because John and Moriarty should be reasonably equally matched, only John was a good man and Moriarty was a dangerous criminal. Every second he wasted here panicking and not finding the hypodermic was another second Moriarty could take advantage of that fact. And John – John couldn't be allowed to die, because Sherlock couldn't live without him. He wanted to bury his face in that stocky chest and breathe in the doctor's scent forever, wanted to drift off to sleep with it and dream of a world where John was everything. What had Doctor Watson done to him?

And then what? What would Moriarty do after he had killed John? He'd carry out his threats to follow the population of London. Moran and Hope were both dead now, but they couldn't be the only sick freaks Moriarty had let out of the penitentiary. He had never thought – never even _imagined_ things would end up like this. It was as if he and John, the rivalry he had lived and breathed for so many years, had all been an elaborate game they had bought into without words, and Sherlock had invited Moriarty to play without teaching him the rules, and he had broken them and thrown their game into reality. Sherlock wasn't ready for reality, for pain and for fear and for the horrible feeling of having no control, having no chance. _Not like this,_ his brain spewed sporadically. _It can't end like this. I haven't even told John I love him yet._

Turning away in despair, Sherlock's eye caught on a dumpster against the wall of the brick building. He almost collapsed in relief when he saw the syringe, not quite encircled in a halo of light with a Hallelujah fanfare but damn close, resting innocently on top of the lid.

Oh, thank _Christ._

He staggered over and snatched it up, elation making his limbs feel as if they were floating. He'd _found_ it – he could jump and sing, but he didn't. With the hypodermic clutched in his hand, he sprinted as fast as he could back to New Scotland Yard, frightening a few of the last evacuees out of their wits with cries of _'it's Sherlock Holmes!' 'No, it's not – it's Moriarty!' _

He barely saw the people, the police vehicles and the helicopters. His sole focus was on the roof of Scotland Yard, on Mycroft and Lestrade, on _John_. As he drew closer, he could hear the sounds of their extended combat drifting to the ground. A few uniformed officers were standing outside, gaping up into the sunlight. "Is that… that's never Doctor Watson?"

Sherlock stopped to look with them for a moment. Neither party had gained the upper hand, and neither seemed particularly disadvantaged. He breathed a short sigh. The man next to him tapped his shoulder. "Hey, you don't know what's going on up there, do you? Is that Moriarty?" Sherlock looked at him; he turned pale and took a step back. "Blimey," he muttered nervously. "You're…"

Sherlock gave the man a tight-lipped smile and raced into the building and up the stairs.

As he got closer, panting, to the top of the stairs and to the roof, he began to hear Moriarty's voice, lilting, incessant. Jim had always loved the sound of his own voice too much. Sherlock stopped suddenly as he heard his name.

"…stay with _Sherlock Holmes_ all this time? Were all the rumours true? You _wanted_ to shag him, didn't you, you still do, I can see it in your eyes. I don't blame you. He's _very_ pretty – it's more than that, though, isn't it? Are you in _love_ with him, Doctor Watson?"

John didn't respond, and Sherlock stayed as though frozen just under the trapdoor. Moriarty laughed, a cold, mirthless chuckle. "What a _shame_ he doesn't feel the same. Were you prepared for that, doctor? It hurt anyway, didn't it, when he freed himself and then _left you_ here with me? He left his own brother down there. Sherlock doesn't care about anybody except himself."

Something caught in Sherlock's chest. That used to be so true, and he couldn't have cared less. But now things were different – now he had John. And John couldn't be allowed to think that he didn't care.

"No," he shouted, bursting through the trapdoor. "No, it's not true, I _do_ care, I –"

John froze in mid-air, turning to look at him, his face slack in shock and something Sherlock dared to imagine was hope. Then, as if in slow motion, he saw Moriarty's fist swing out of nowhere and clock the doctor hard in the side of the head. John, distracted, could do nothing to soften the blow. For a moment he stood frozen. Then he dropped out of the air like a sack of potatoes, clearly unconscious.

Sherlock's heart stopped. He was barely aware of the hypodermic dropping out of his fingers and falling to the ground with a _clink_; barely aware of Moriarty's bitter chuckle or Mycroft's relieved 'Sherlock!' All he heard was the soft _thump_ as the prone body of John Watson hit the ground, and all he could do was drop everything and run to his side.

"John, _no!"_

But the doctor didn't move.


	16. On the Side of the Angels

Sherlock dropped to his knees at Doctor Watson's side, taking his head in both hands and cradling it to his chest. He was babbling, and vaguely aware of it, but he couldn't stop, because John couldn't be dead. The word 'no' lost all meaning as he repeated it so often the repetitions blended into one another, one long mesh of syllables that meant everything and nothing.

Had he been slightly less hysterical before this whole thing kicked off, he would have stopped to rationalise a little, because that's what Sherlock did; he would have realised that there was no _way_ that one solid punch could have done anything more than knocked out the great superhero John Watson. Instead, he hugged John's prone torso to him and rocked it, sobbing, aware of Moriarty descending to the roof behind him. He could feel rather than see the cruel, triumphant smirk on the criminal mastermind's face as he watched Sherlock completely unravel.

Fortunately for everyone involved, it was only a matter of seconds before John stirred, tensed, then muttered something into the fabric of Sherlock's chest that he was pressed so hard against. Sherlock jumped and let him go; the doctor scrambled out of the detective's grasp, gasping for breath. "John," Sherlock started. "Are you okay?"

"Considering I've just been punched in the side of the head, fallen about thirty feet, and then suffocated, surprisingly I'm fine," John replied airily. Sherlock huffed in relief.

"I thought… I thought maybe you…"

Doctor Watson frowned. "Sherlock," he started in his very best GP's _I-don't-think-you-should-leave-hospital-just-yet _voice. "I don't –"

Moriarty cleared his throat. "Sherlock, darling, step away from Doctor Watson," he lilted gently. John cast him a beseeching look.

But Sherlock wasn't going anywhere. John _had_ to know that he would never leave. "No," he bit out, turning to face the mastermind. Moriarty raised an eyebrow, his face breaking into a delighted smile.

"You won't?"

Sherlock shook his head. "No. You can't have John."

Moriarty's cruel grin widened. "Oh, can't I? I'm intrigued that you think _you_ could possibly stop me, Sherlock. Haven't we been down this road before?"

Sherlock pointedly ignored the looks of _no, Sherlock, don't _that John was desperately throwing him and met the professor's dark gaze. "If you want him, you'll have to go through me."

Moriarty smiled. "Easy." He looked back at John, pale and with the beginnings of a bruise on his left cheekbone where he'd been knocked out of the sky. Sherlock knew he must look worse; his neck was still throbbing from where Moran had bitten him. He knew Moriarty could 'go through him' easily, but John had to know, he had to tell him, _now_. _John. I'd die for you. You're everything to me._

"John," he breathed, reaching out, he had to touch his face. "John, I –"

"All right, that's enough sentiment." Without warning, Sherlock felt his feet leave the roof and he couldn't breathe, Moriarty had a hold on the back of his collar and was lifting him into the air. John called out his name, but he hadn't the breath to reply.

He lifted a hand and ripped off the button holding his cape together; the pressure on his neck vanished and he hit the ground, crying out as the impact sent pain jarring up his bad arm. He scrambled back towards the doctor. "John, I have to tell you I –"

"_Enough."_

Sherlock didn't feel Moriarty grab him again, it happened too quickly. All he felt was the crushing impact, the breath leaving his lungs as his back slammed into the satellite. He didn't bother with Duct Tape this time; Sherlock felt the base of the satellite bend and snap as the consulting criminal bent the iron bars holding it to the ground and looped them around Sherlock's wrists as if they were liquorice sticks. Moriarty's mouth was on his ear, his breath hot against the side of Sherlock's face.

"I think you should watch him die, don't you?" Moriarty whispered. Sherlock flinched, and the mastermind withdrew slightly. "Since you _care so much?_ I think it's only right that you see the exact moment when the life leaves his eyes, and you'll know it's your fault. Don't you think?"

Moriarty smiled in an amateur's impression of kindness. "Any last words you'd like to say to the good doctor?"

"Sherlock," John mumbled. "Don't, please…"

"Please, John, I love you," he blurted out. The good doctor stopped dead in shock, then opened his mouth and tried to speak. Sherlock was having none of it. "No, John, please, I think I'll explode if I don't say it. He said I don't care about you, but I do – I've never cared about anyone before, not like this. No-one's ever cared about me the way you…" Sherlock had to stop and swallow. He wished he could use his hands. Usually the doctor was so obvious, but this one time it was important Sherlock knew what he was thinking his frown could have meant anything. He carried on anyway. "When I thought I'd killed you I went mad, literally. That's why this whole situation happened, because I needed you, because I was trying to recreate you. But I never could, John, because you're perfect and I need you. You've always been the only thing I ever wanted."

He sat back a moment and waited for John's verdict, marvelling slightly at his counterpart's newfound ability to keep his face perfectly inscrutable. How did he do that? Even Sherlock himself, the king of calm and cool, couldn't help but give shades of himself away in his face and body language. He was very aware of Moriarty, leaning against the satellite, watching them with a cool, wryly amused smile on his cruel face.

Mycroft, apparently, was aware of it too. Sherlock had almost forgotten about his brother, still holding his hands behind him in a decent affectation of being tied up. As Sherlock stopped breathing, his entire world narrowing down to what John would say – surely he had to say_ something_ soon? – the government official noticed that Moriarty, too, seemed to be focussed entirely on the army doctor, waiting for him to say something.

Mycroft hadn't seen the syringe, and wasn't sure what it would do anyway. The science, that was Sherlock's stuff. All he knew was that Moriarty was distracted, and there had to be something he could do about it. Moriarty couldn't be infallible – that would be unfair. There _had_ to be something he could do. He wasn't a killer, but if it was Moriarty or all the rest of them, he wouldn't hesitate. He still had Sherlock's knife.

John was looking at Sherlock with his most inscrutable face, and the curly-haired prisoner was becoming more and more agitated, much to Moriarty's amusement. His brain was running madly in all directions like a terrified penguin: John hated him, he was frowning to hide his disgust that Sherlock could possibly feel anything different; John was confused, he was frowning because he'd never thought of his nemesis like that and didn't know how to let him down gently; John loved him, he was frowning because… no. Why would he be frowning if he loved him?

_Please, John. I'd give anything for a word from you. _

Mycroft jumped, flying in front of Sherlock soundlessly and landing right beside Moriarty; before Sherlock had a chance to react he had whipped out the knife and made a lunge for the criminal mastermind's throat.

Moriarty was quicker than Sherlock, though, and so the knife never found its mark. Sherlock could have told him it wouldn't, but they were all desperate; quicker than anyone could work out what had happened, Mycroft was hanging by his knife-hand, gripped by Moriarty at the wrist like some kind of clamp on a crane, lifting into the air. Sherlock pulled uselessly at the bent steel around his own wrists, but stopped before he hurt himself further.

John seemed to snap out of whatever he'd sunken into enough to pull his battered body into a sitting position. Sherlock's eyes implored him; he shook his head, trying to reorient himself.

"What shall I do with him, do you think, Sherlock?" Moriarty lilted softly, casting a look over his shoulder. "Throw him off the roof? Break his pretty neck? I could just decapitate him."

Mycroft looked at his younger brother. Sherlock looked back, trying to keep his face impassive. "If you like. There's never been any love lost between Mycroft and I." The elder Holmes must have known, must have seen that Sherlock was desperately clutching onto anything that might save him. Moriarty could see it, too. The mastermind smiled knowingly and Sherlock felt himself go cold all over.

"Fine," he said, and dropped the government official unceremoniously on the ground. Sherlock watched as dispassionately as he could, but Mycroft didn't move. He closed his eyes; he didn't want to see anymore. To open his eyes was to be assaulted with the view of John, standing now but shaky, of Mycroft on the ground unmoving, of Moriarty bearing down on him, smirking, and of it all being his fault.

"Where were we?" Moriarty asked no-one in particular, his Irish lilt bright and cheerful. "From memory it was rather priceless. Sherlock, _my dear_, do you remember?"

Sherlock opened his eyes and found himself staring straight at John. "You told John I didn't care about him," he supplied levelly. "I had to tell him I love him." And then he saw it – Doctor Watson slipped him a tired, wan smile that was almost more confusing than the frown. Moriarty cackled.

"Oh, yes, of course. How could I have forgotten? Well, please continue."

Sherlock cast the mastermind a quick glance before looking back at the doctor. "That was it, I don't have anything more to say. I love him, and I think I always have. I just… wanted him to know."

The silence from Sherlock's earlier confession descended on them again. Moriarty tutted impatiently. "Well, Doctor? You must have _something_ to say?"

John looked over at him and smiled grimly. "Why? He already knows. He's Sherlock Holmes, he knows everything." He sighed and looked back at Sherlock, now thoroughly confused. He genuinely had no idea what the army doctor was talking about, and that was frustrating and somewhat wonderful at the same time. "I think I was the last to realise it, actually. Sarah knew before I did. That's why we never really worked out, you know." He directed the last comment at Moriarty, who did a rather gruesome imitation of a sympathetic smile.

"John?" Sherlock choked out. "I don't know what you're trying to say. I know I'm stupid, and dangerous and the last person you could ever… but I thought maybe…"

"Oh, don't be stupid," John waved away, his voice almost angry. "You've always known I was in love with you. That's why you kept crashing my dates with Sarah, isn't it? Rubbing it in that what I really wanted was you, and I couldn't have you? In the end I just stopped making plans, because I didn't want to miss out on the chance that you'd do something, and I'd hurt someone by dropping everything and running to you just so I could see you smile when I turned up and know that_ I_ was the one who was making you happy. I'd have made a better sidekick for you than a nemesis."

Sherlock realised that his mouth was open and shut it. All the time, John had been in love with him and he hadn't realised? _How_ had he not noticed? That would have made everything so much easier, everything he struggled with when John had been upstairs. To think that all of this might have been avoided if he'd just said it at the beginning._ John, I think I might be in love with you_. And that would have done it. They could have dealt with Jim and run away together and not be facing mutual death for them and Mycroft and Lestrade. "John," he heard himself saying. "I didn't mean to – I didn't know…"

John shrugged. "It doesn't matter, you daft sod," he said gently. "We know now, right? I love you and you love me. I'm glad we got that sorted."

The smile that stole Sherlock's face was rather violent in its takeover; it pulled at his cheeks until he was positively beaming at Doctor Watson, who was beaming back, because they loved each other and maybe, finally, they could get around to doing something about that.

Moriarty had other ideas. "Yes, I'm glad we got that sorted too," he sneered, making the both of them remember sharply what it was they were doing there. Reality came crashing brutally back. Yes, it was good to get that sorted – neither of them could bear dying without knowing. "Shall we get back to where I was killing you, Doctor?"

John cast a last desperate look at Sherlock, then smiled as calmly as he could. "With pleasure."

The doctor made the first move, barrelling into some sort of rugby tackle that knocked Moriarty off his feet. Sherlock tried to reach Mycroft with his feet, to nudge him, try and see how badly he was hurt. The mastermind delivered a good punch to John's face, making Sherlock yelp in sympathy. There had been so much pain, for everyone. Why couldn't it just end?

Moriarty took advantage of John's dizziness, clutching his head, to launch his body at the more solid man's and the tables were turned. Suddenly, John was on his back, pinned, with Jim Moriarty on top of him, leering unpleasantly. Sherlock stopped struggling. "So, Doctor," Moriarty hissed in John's ear. "This is how it ends. Bet you never saw this coming."

Something warm brushed against Sherlock's hand; he snapped his head around to see Detective Inspector Lestrade alert, rubbing his wrists at the hairless lines where he'd ripped the tape free, eyes fixed sadly on Mycroft's prone body, every inch of his body set with determination. Slowly, so as not to alert Moriarty – still completely focussed on John's impending destruction – he bent down to pick up the knife Mycroft had dropped. Sherlock shifted more violently, hoping Moriarty would put it down to panic about John and not look at him, but desperate to attract Lestrade's attention.

"I think I'd rather have been blown up by Sherlock in the first place," John replied, turning his head to look at him. Sherlock smiled as best he could, tears prickling his eyes. This_ couldn't _be the end, after everything they'd worked for. Moriarty just smiled.

Lestrade looked up at him. "Will it work?" he mouthed, gesturing to the knife. Sherlock shook his head.

"There's a syringe," he whispered, as quietly as he could. Lestrade inched closer. "A hypodermic needle. I dropped it, it's on the roof somewhere. Use that instead."

Lestrade nodded, looked around, and disappeared from Sherlock's eyeline. He tried to refocus on Moriarty and John – how could he stall them without drawing attention to the fact that Lestrade wasn't taped to the satellite anymore? And how had that happened anyway?

"I think I would've rathered that, too," the mastermind was saying. "It would have made this a lot quicker. I don't know how you managed to cheat death last time, Doctor, but I'll make sure you can't do it this time. Or was the whole thing a plot between the two of you? Get out of the public eye a bit so you could get yourselves a love-nest?"

John chuckled weakly. "Call it my exit-strategy," he corrected. "Everyone's got to be selfish sometimes. The love-nest was just an added bonus – not that we got to use it."

"And it's not like no-one thought you were shagging anyway," Moriarty continued, as though this were a casual conversation and John wasn't rapidly losing air as the Irishman's delicate hands settled around his neck. "I like to think I helped you two. Who knows how long you would've danced around each other if I hadn't shown up and forced you to admit your feelings?"

John coughed weakly. "Yeah, you were a godsend," he agreed sarcastically. "Who knows how long we would have stayed alive if you hadn't insisted on killing us?"

Sherlock could see the energy, the_ life _bleed out of John as Moriarty's hands cut off his air supply. The doctor turned his head to look at him, smiling softly. "I'm sorry, Sherlock," he croaked. "I'm sorry we couldn't be together."

"We _are_ together," Sherlock insisted, his throat aching with restricted tears. He wasn't going to cry in front of John, he _wasn't_. But the tears came anyway, spilling over his eyelids and rolling wretchedly down his cheeks. "John, please…" he didn't know why he was pleading, because it wasn't as if John could do anything about it.

"Shut up, Sherlock, darling, you're next," Moriarty snapped. "Emotional goodbyes make my head ache."

But Sherlock had stopped listening to his sneer because John's head had slumped further to the side and it _couldn't _be, it couldn't be over, and John couldn't be dead. For the second time in less than an hour he was facing an inert John Watson, and he didn't think there'd be much for Moriarty to do to him because without John he was practically dead anyway. Sobs choked in his throat; the Irishman looked up at him, smirking. "I thought_ you _of all people would be immune to this sort of thing," he said wistfully. "I thought I might have fun breaking you. Now I'll just have to kill you and that's_ boring_."

Sherlock barely heard him. It didn't matter anymore.

Moriarty made to stand up, but out of nowhere Lestrade pounced and he was knocked off his feet in surprise and catapulted right over John; to Sherlock's delight, the doctor gasped and choked, rolling over to vomit on the roof beside him. In a quick, practised movement, the DI stabbed Moriarty's neck with the hypodermic in his hand, pushing down the plunger until all of Sherlock's 'cure' was writhing in his bloodstream.

Pain lanced up Sherlock's bad arm as he struggled to get to John, to hold him, to make sure he was okay, but Moriarty was screaming in pain and rage and the syringe went flying dangerously close to his eye as the mastermind yanked it out of his neck and threw it. He stepped forward, reaching clawed fingers out to grasp the DI by the neck and lift him into the air; Lestrade choked and writhed in his grip, his feet leaving the ground.

Moriarty seemed to flinch inwardly, his steady ascension halting and flickering. His face twisted in rage, lips curling back into a snarl of effort as his feet twitched and shuddered, sinking gently back to earth, and Sherlock could see his arm shaking with the effort of keeping Lestrade in the air. The crimson glare in his eyes flickered in and out of consciousness before fizzling out like a dead lightbulb; the two men crumpled slightly as they hit the ground.

Sherlock had thought it would be more dramatic than this slow ebb of strength; he'd thought there would be flashing lights like that bloke off _Doctor Who _or something. Instead there was Moriarty's scream of rage, piercing and rough, consuming everything as though it were chewing at him from the inside.

Then there was a burst of heat that radiated out from the criminal, slamming Sherlock back into the satellite and forcing Moriarty's hand from Lestrade's throat. He closed his eyes as they started to water, but almost as soon as it had started it was over, and the Irishman's voice was dying too, croaking and turning hoarse.

Lestrade drew back his fist and socked Moriarty in the side of the head; he dropped like a stone to the ground, where the DI pulled a pair of cuffs from his pocket.

John coughed and sat up. "Well, no-one could say _that_ wasn't a blast," he said brightly. "He weakened a little towards the end, though."

Sherlock laughed helplessly at the punning, and at the relief that it was _over_. At a time like this? The only person who'd ever bantered with him like that was John.

Lestrade kicked Moriarty's prone, cuffed form gently and sighed. "I am _so_ due for a pay rise."


	17. After my Own Heart

Sherlock rushed to John's side and helped him to sit up. He tried to prop the doctor up, back to his front, but John was having none of it; he pulled Sherlock into a clumsy, awkwardly-positioned hug. "I love you," he said fiercely into Sherlock's shoulder. Sherlock clutched his body to him as tightly as his bad arm would allow.

"I love you, too, John, so much." He felt tears rise to his throat again and swallowed them. It was all right now. Everything was all right now.

Sherlock watched over John's shoulder as Lestrade got out his phone – still with his foot on Moriarty's back – and dialled a number. "Sir?" he said grimly into it. "We've got Moriarty. Hope and Moran are dead. You can bring everyone back now, sir, I'm sorry that was necessary." Sherlock winced as the angry reply from the other end of the phone was delivered loudly enough for him to hear. "At least we got him early, sir, things could have been a lot worse. Is the Chief Inspector there?"

John and Sherlock disengaged and helped each other to stand up. Sherlock looked down at Mycroft, still not moving; John limped over to him and began taking his pulse. "Hello, sir. It's Lestrade. Yeah, we got him. James Moriarty is no longer a threat." This time Sherlock was satisfied to hear the response was more positive; the Chief Inspector seemed to recognise the danger of the situation. Sherlock thought he could understand the Prime Minister's discontent – this wasn't going to look good on his political record. "It wasn't really me, sir. I had some help." He looked up at Sherlock and John, grinning. "Who? Oh, you wouldn't believe me if I told you."

He looked down at the criminal under his feet. "Well, he's not doing the Doctor Watson stuff anymore, but he's probably still one of the most dangerous people in London. We'll need a team to watch him in the cells. And you might want to redirect the majority of the force to rounding up the rest of the Penitentiary before you move the public back in." His eyes fell on John, frowning down at Mycroft's wrist held loosely between his fingers. "Sir? I… I have to go. We're on the roof when you send a team up."

He dropped the phone and joined them beside the elder Holmes. "Is he… oh, God, please…"

"He should be all right," John said finally, dropping his wrist. "He might be out a while longer, but he'll come around. He'll just need to not do anything for a while. Actually, I think that would do us all good." Sherlock winced; now that John mentioned it, his arm, stomach, neck and head suddenly hurt _a lot_. Lestrade sat down beside the government official's head as the doctor took Sherlock's hand and helped him up again.

"You two will be heroes when you go down there," he remarked to them. Sherlock went pale; John pulled a face. "Especially you, Doctor Watson. I bet every journalist in London is down there."

"I think we'll be taking the back way out," John admitted. "We should take some time out of the private eye." He looked at Sherlock, who found himself smiling helplessly. "Get ourselves a love-nest somewhere," he joked. Sherlock's stomach flopped oddly. Lestrade chuckled.

"We have to find Molly first," Sherlock pointed out. "As quickly as possible. It's my fault she is wherever she is, and I don't know what Moriarty did to her." He looked down at John. "And then we'll go."

They looked at each other for a moment, tired and weak from relief and happiness. "I'm going to kiss you," John said softly. Sherlock shivered. "That's okay, right?"

Sherlock replied by leaning down and doing the job himself, gently touching his lips to the doctor's. The contact seemed to spark something stronger between them and they simultaneously reached out and pulled each other closer, eliciting a yelp of pain from Sherlock that didn't make either of them let go because they _needed_ to be as close as they could physically get. John tentatively ran a tongue against Sherlock's lips and he accepted it, caressed it.

Lestrade coughed gently and they reluctantly forced their lips apart, keeping their bodies twined and leaning on each other as much for physical support as emotional comfort. The DI smiled apologetically. Sherlock raised a hand to stroke through John's hair. "Where shall we go?" he asked softly.

John hummed gently. "Not far."

"Yes, please," Sherlock argued plaintively. "Let's go far away from here."

"We have to help clean up, Sherlock," John reasoned. "London's a mess. We – well, you especially – owe it to Detective Inspector Lestrade." Both men looked over at the aforementioned DI, who was looking increasingly awkward.

"Actually, Sherlock, legally, I should ask for a lot more than that," he said. Sherlock's face fell – was Lestrade going to try to put him in prison? After everything they'd been through together in the last few hours? Then the DI grinned. "But I won't. Andrews will understand. I'm sentencing you to community service. You'll have to assist the clean-up effort."

Sherlock rolled his eyes. "I can _be_ the clean-up effort if you like," he said archly. "I'll put the BrainBots onto it. You'll have the Penitentiary back in play by tomorrow if we use all of them." He put two fingers to his lips and whistled; after a few minutes, a swarm of the spindly machines appeared on the horizon. "One of you wait here. The others, take care of the hole in the Penitentiary wall." They beeped happily and zoomed off, tripping over each other in a comic need to not be singled out as the one that had to stay.

Eventually, though, there was only one robot left on the rooftop. Sherlock looked at it. "You're going to help us find Molly," he told it gently. "You know where she is, don't you? Take us there." It beeped enthusiastically and sped off; Sherlock had to call it back. "No so fast," he scolded. "We do actually have to be able to follow."

Ignoring John's giggles at the way he dealt with them, Sherlock set off in the direction of the staircase, wincing painfully as each step hurt. After a few limping steps, he stopped. "This is ridiculous," he muttered tersely. "We'll never get there fast enough if we have to limp all the bloody way – and you're _not_ carrying me," he snapped as the robot inched closer. "That's painful at the best of times."

John rolled his eyes. "_I'll_ carry you," he demanded. Sherlock looked at him, concern and incredulity in his grey eyes.

"You can't, John," he protested. "You're hurt too, you're not strong enough."

The army doctor rolled his shoulders and cracked his knuckles. "I'm Doctor John Watson," he said firmly. "I'm strong enough to carry my boyfriend off the roof of a twenty-story building."

Sherlock froze. "Your… boyfriend? Is that what I am?"

John frowned at him. "Yeah? Is that… not okay?"

He thought about it as he picked up his cape from where it lay abandoned on the rooftop. "No, it's… fine," he said finally, giving John a chaste peck on the lips. "I think I might like it."

They turned to look at Detective Inspector Lestrade, still bent over Mycroft's unconscious body with the Holmes' head in his lap. "Inspector?" Sherlock said tentatively. "When he comes around, can you tell him… tell him I'm sorry. For everything, but especially for what I said when you came for Irene Adler this morning."

Lestrade grinned. "All right. And Sherlock – don't make me come after you again."

Sherlock gave him a scathing look, but he was still smiling. "Please."

"Okay, you two," John placated, snaking an arm gingerly around Sherlock's waist. "You know," he said conversationally as they started walking towards the back end of the roof. "Maybe when all this has died down, you could actually _help_ the police. You're smarter than most of them, and they get a lot of cases they can't solve. You could go have a look at some of them for them." Sherlock feigned interest.

"Well, I think you may have trouble getting support from the rest of the Yard on that one," Lestrade said wryly. "But _my _crime scenes will always be open, as long as you're on the right side of the law."

Sherlock wasn't sure why that touched him, but it did. He swallowed. "Thank you, Inspector." Lestrade smiled. John chuckled at the both of them and scooped the curly-haired genius into his arms.

There, being carried bridal-style by his boyfriend as they stepped off the roof of New Scotland Yard, Sherlock knew without a doubt that he was the happiest man in the world.

* * *

><p>The first thing Mycroft was aware of was pain. <em>Lots<em> of pain. He felt like he had been dropped from a great height onto a concrete surface and every muscle, bone and individual nerve ending in his body was boldly protesting the impact.

Which, when he thought about it, made perfect sense.

The second thing he was aware of was the fact that someone with short fingers and dry palms was holding his hand.

This, no matter how hard he thought about it, didn't make any kind of sense at all, but it felt nice so he let it go.

Slowly, he became aware of the rest of his surroundings: he was lying on someone else's bed in a plainly-furnished room he didn't recognise; the navy curtains were half-drawn, letting a not-unpleasant amount of sunlight in. The hand-holder, he discovered to his absolute feverish delight, was Gregory Lestrade.

The DI smiled when he saw Mycroft was awake. "Hello," he said, in a voice that croaked slightly from underuse.

Mycroft smiled hesitantly. "Gregory? What are you doing here?"

Greg smiled. "My bedroom."

"Okay." He looked around, trying to picture the DI habiting the room. "What am _I _doing here?"

Detective Inspector Lestrade shrugged flippantly. "You were unconscious. I couldn't just leave you on the roof." He dropped Mycroft's hand, which twitched reflexively at the loss, and his face grew serious. "You had some explaining to do."

He helped Mycroft to sit up and got him some water, which he managed painfully to drink by himself. For a moment the two men stared at each other. Then Mycroft sighed.

"Gregory," he breathed. For some reason the name seemed to calm him down. What was he going to do if this wasn't good enough? He wasn't sure he could live without the DI for any longer. "Well, I, um… I suppose I should start with my relationship with Sherlock. What he said to Moriarty – oh, no, you were unconscious. Sherlock said that there's never been –"

"Any love lost between you," Greg completed. "I was actually conscious by that point. I was just trying not to draw attention to it."

Mycroft smiled. "You did that very well. How did you get free, then?"

Greg shrugged. "Moran, the bloke who tied me up, he wasn't too bright. Taped me to the cross-brace where all the spikes are, you know, to stop the birds landing." He frowned. "What happened to him, by the way?"

It was Mycroft's turn to look insouciant. "Doctor Watson barrelled him off the roof. Then Sherlock did the same to Hope. But – what happened to Moriarty?" he suddenly started to panic. "Is he still out there? Where's Sherlock?"

Greg put a calming hand on his chest and he froze. "Shh. It's okay. Moriarty is powerless and under arrest at the Yard. Sherlock and John left to find Molly Hooper. Sherlock said to say he's really sorry for telling me who you were."

"I should have told you when we first met," Mycroft admitted. "I was just so afraid you'd react… well, the way you did. You'd think I was working with him."

The hand left his chest. "Okay. Start explaining."

Mycroft took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "Well. I never expected anything to happen to Doctor Watson. I let Sherlock have his fun because I was confident that Watson would always stop him. Then when he died and Sherlock started blowing things up I…" He paused. Greg was watching him intently, his face neutral. "He's my brother. If it were anyone else I'd have dealt with them quickly and quietly. But with Sherlock… I had surveillance footage of his flat and I saw him put something in the Hooper girl's boyfriend's dinner. I didn't know what it would do, but I decided that someone had to try to rein him in a bit. _I _couldn't do it, he'd know it was me. And I've always managed to keep a fairly low profile, nationally. I'd been watching you since you were promoted to head the Task Force, so I decided to give you a bit of a push."

He looked up to meet Greg's eyes. He needed him to see how much he cared about him, how much he'd never wanted to hurt him. "I always told myself I watched you as much as I did so that Sherlock wouldn't get hurt, but it wasn't true. I watched you because I liked you. I liked watching you. I loved how you were fighting such a hopeless battle, but you never gave up. You did so much more than anyone else would ever do in trying to catch my brother."

The DI carefully kept his face in the same expression. "So I called you, and made sure things in your department moved at double-speed. I couldn't tell you who I was because you wouldn't accept my help – of course you wouldn't. I'm Sherlock's brother, I'm not supposed to want him in prison, even _if_ it'd be safer for him there. And then when I was talking to you, I couldn't help… trying… I thought that if I could get you to trust me I could get you to like me, and then maybe even love me, and then when I finally told you who I was you'd love me too much to be too angry." He winced as Greg frowned slightly. "And I hoped Sherlock would be in prison by then," he added, "so you'd know I was on your side."

There was silence. Greg looked away and out the window so that Mycroft couldn't see his eyes, which sent the government official into a panic. "Greg?" he said, trying to move his head so that he could see the DI's face. "Gregory, please, look at me. Greg? Please, I don't know what else I can say to make this better. If I can't have you I… I love you. Please. Please trust me, Gregory, _please._"

"Damn it," Greg said gently, turning back to look at him. Mycroft saw tears distorting his eyes and panicked – what had he done wrong? Oh, God. Greg was never going to be able to trust him, it was never going to work, he didn't love him.

"Gregory? What did I… I'm sorry! I never, _never_ wanted to hurt you."

Gregory Lestrade shook his head, laughing, a tear spilling over the edge of one eyelid and rolling down his cheek. He climbed carefully onto the bed beside the elder Holmes and curled his body in beside the taller man, draping a gentle arm over his chest. "I'm just happy, Mycroft," he said softly, his voice choked. "Moriarty's gone. Sherlock Holmes seems to have been converted into a hero by the supposedly late Doctor John Watson. And the man I fell in love with over the phone and would have trusted to the ends of the earth if he'd explained his motives to me the first time we met," Mycroft winced at the reprimanding note in the DI's voice, but the sensation paled in comparison to the warmth flooding him at the words. "The man I _love_ loves me. Can you die of happiness?"

Mycroft inserted an arm underneath Greg so that he could pull him closer and kiss the top of his head. "I think we'll find out."


	18. All I Ever Wanted

They found Molly in the abandoned warehouse Sherlock had followed them to in the first place, tied to a chair in a backroom. She broke into helpless sobs when she saw them; no amount of consoling on Sherlock's part could convince her that John wasn't a hallucination. Then Sherlock realised that consoling her probably wasn't helping the dreamlike feel of the situation, and reverted to normality.

"Oh, for goodness' sake, Molly, buck up."

Her eyes widened and she stopped crying. "It's you," she said quietly. He raised an arch eyebrow.

"Of course it's me, Molly. Who else is going to rescue you? And I'm not even going to bother saying 'I told you so' about Jim." Molly shifted over to warily allow John to cut the Duct tape keeping her on the chair.

"Then… you're really Doctor Watson?" John looked at Sherlock hesitantly. "You were telling the truth about that, too?"

Sherlock rolled his eyes. "Oh, do keep up, Molly. Come on, we haven't got all day."

Back at Baker Street, they left Molly nursing a cup of very strong tea while Sherlock threw some clothes into a suitcase and John watched from the bed, giddy in each other's presence. Sherlock slammed the case shut and frowned at John.

"There's something I still don't understand," he said slowly, sitting opposite him on the bed. John stroked his arm gently.

"What's that?"

Sherlock removed John's fingers from his arm and crossed his legs. "Why did you do that at Westminster? Why did you let everyone think you were dead? Forget me, what about Sarah? Your parents? They're still grieving you. Why was that necessary?"

John's face fell. "I, um…" his entire body closed like a butterfly folding its wings and he turned his face away. "I don't want to talk about that now, Sherlock."

The supervillain sat stock still and refrained from asking further until his entire body vibrated with the need to know. A minute later, he walked around the bed until John was facing him again. "John?" he probed gently, sinking to his knees so the doctor was forced to look at him. He took the older man's hand in his. "It's important, isn't it," he stated flatly. John tried to look away again.

"No, it's not."

Sherlock moved into his line of sight persistently. "Well, it is now."

"Sherlock!" John said angrily. "I said I don't want to… not now. Not when we're so happy." Sherlock just looked at him, a slight frown creasing his flawless face. John sighed. "I don't want you to – you think I'm flawless, you think I'm a hero. I don't want you to know the truth and not like me for it."

Sherlock reached a hand to the doctor's face. It had seen a lot of action, that face, and Sherlock loved every laugh-line and frown-line alike. "I don't think you're flawless, John," he said softly. "I think you're _perfect_, flaws and all. One more flaw isn't going to change that."

John placed his tanned hand over Sherlock's marble one and clutched it tightly. "It's a big one," he admitted, drawing the pale hand down from his face to his chest and holding it over his heart. "Promise me you won't leave me for it." Sherlock mutely placed his other hand over John's so that they were both pressed over his heartbeat, tripping slightly faster than usual. "Selfishness," he whispered, averting his eyes again. "I did it because I'm selfish and I didn't want people to… everyone thinks I'm a hero," he said, his voice carefully neutral. "Doctor Watson, defender of London. You know. I… I wasn't allowed to have flaws. To be selfish, or get annoyed. If you – or anyone else, and it was the anyone elses that got to me – did something that put someone in danger, I had to go and help them. It's a full-time job, you're always on call. And I couldn't say I'd had enough, or that I wanted a _life_ that involved _me." _He sighed. "Someone told me once that everyone has the right to be selfish sometimes, but I didn't."

Sherlock was getting the distinct feeling that a lot of this was his fault. His arms were beginning to ache.

"Sarah and I, we never really connected," John continued, staring resolutely into space. "But I think she thought we did. I couldn't tell her the truth, because it wouldn't be… I would have upset her, and Doctor Watson doesn't upset people. I couldn't tell her the truth, because the truth was that I didn't love her because I loved _you_, and can you imagine what that would do if it got out? You can't _quit_ being a hero. All I wanted was a normal life, but you can't have that if you can fly and move buses and _save_ people. But if everyone thought I was dead, then…"

Sherlock had to lower his hands because his arms grew tired, but he felt that sinking, sick feeling in his stomach again. _All I wanted was a normal life. Why, John? Why didn't you want me?_ He gently pulled his hands out of John's. The doctor let them go, looking at Sherlock sadly.

"The silver was just an excuse, that's why it didn't work on Moriarty. I didn't want to let you go, Sherlock. But I couldn't see any other way, please believe me." Sherlock twisted his hands in his lap, his mind racing to a conclusion he didn't like. _He wants a normal life. I might be able to give it to him. I'd lose him, but it'd make him happy – wouldn't that be worth it? _John was frowning at him. "Sherlock? I hid at the Abbey in case… I wanted to see you again. I think I wanted you to find me. What happened, that was perfect. This is more than I could ever have asked for, that I have you." He looked up at Sherlock, suddenly unsure. "Sherlock? Are you… oh, please don't do this. Sherlock, I am so sorry."

The supervillain took a deep breath and looked up. "John, that thing I injected Moriarty with, that took away his abilities. I don't know if it would work on you, because I don't know how you got to be the way you are. But if that's what you want, a normal life without flying and superstrength and all those things…" He stopped to try and control his bottom lip and stop it from trembling. "If that's what you want, I can try. If it'll make you happy."

John stared at him. At the look in his beautiful hazel eyes, wondering, _you'd do that for me?, _Sherlock gave up the fight against his tears and let them dribble down his face. This was it. He'd had what, three hours of blind happiness, and this was the part where someone knocked on the door and told him there'd been a terrible error somewhere and took it all away.

Then the doctor laughed. "No," he said incredulously, like he didn't believe Sherlock could be that stupid. "No, that's not what I want, Sherlock, of _course_ not!" Sherlock looked up, eyes wide and streaming. "This – _this _is what I want. _You_ are what I want, you and me together just like we used to be only _better_ because we love each other and we know that now. This is _perfect_, Sherlock, this is what I _always_ wanted. I only wanted the part of a normal life that meant I didn't have to pretend I hated you, pretend to defeat you, fake contempt at all your plans when what I was really thinking the whole time was how _brilliant_ you are. I love you, Sherlock, more than anything. Come here." He reached out and pulled the supervillain to him, crushing his head against his chest. Sherlock couldn't take it anymore and started to cry in earnest.

"John," he sobbed, clutching at the doctor's shirt. "Oh, John…" He raised his head to push his lips against the older man's, hard, and so John's grip on his back tightened and pulled him closer. Sherlock needed to know, needed to be sure, needed _John_, so he sat up straighter and diverted his full attention to kissing him, begging and being granted entry into John's mouth with his tongue. He moved them so that John was lying on the bed – _his_ bed, John was lying on _his bed_ – and he could press their entire bodies together, because he needed to be closer, needed John to see how much he wanted him.

"Are you two okay in – oh! Sorry." Sherlock pulled back slightly to allow the two of them to look around at Molly, an impressive shade of pink. "Sorry. Leaving now." She backed out of the room, looking temporarily stunned like an insect under bright light, shutting the door with a _click_ behind her.

John looked up at Sherlock, who looked down at him, frowning. He opened his mouth to say something but realised there was nothing he could say that would combat the awkwardness of the moment.

Then the beginnings of a smile fought their way onto Sherlock's face and the two of them burst out laughing. John wriggled his way out from underneath the lanky body above him. "Come on," he said, taking his boyfriend's hand and tugging him up. "There's something I should show you."

He pulled Sherlock up the stairs and through the fragments of door still hanging forlornly onto their hinges. Sherlock looked back at it. "You really did trash my door, didn't you?" he commented idly. "Were you that worried?"

John shot him an incredulous look as he tapped in the password to his laptop. "Of course I was worried. Last time you were alone with that man he almost strangled you." He handed over the computer. "This is what I was doing, the whole time you kept me up here."

Sherlock sat down on the bed, staring at the screen. It was a Word document. More than that, it was _fanfiction. _About him and John.

_People go to costume parties as Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson. They usually go together, an ensemble piece. But when they do go alone, they always go as him. Sherlock. I guess they must know I'm nothing without him._

Sherlock looked up at John in surprise. The doctor grimaced apologetically. "I'm not a writer. But I needed something to do, and some way to express what I felt about you. I figured there's so much of this stuff on the internet anyway no-one would know it was me." With a huffed laugh, Sherlock kept reading.

"_Sherlock?" When he turned around, I swallowed hard, trying to will myself to just do it, just tell him. But I couldn't. The great Doctor Watson was too cowardly to tell Sherlock Holmes I was in love with him. I sighed instead. "Nothing. Good luck." After I watched him sweep like a beautiful kind of bat out of the room, I fought the urge to bang my head against the wall like the heroine in an American rom-com film. That was what he reduced me to._

That was it – there was no more. Sherlock scrolled down a bit to make sure, then held out the laptop to John. "Finish it," he commanded. John laughed.

"All right. And then we're leaving, promise?" Sherlock shrugged, so John propped the keyboard against his legs and started typing. His fingers were irritatingly slow over the keys, but Sherlock didn't say anything; he read painstakingly over the doctor's shoulder as he finished. Finally the plonky keyboarding stopped. "There," John said firmly. "Can we go now?"

"You should post it," Sherlock said, grinning wryly. "Then when people eventually find out about us, we can use it as our statement." John snorted. "John," Sherlock said seriously, kissing his neck softly. "I really, really love you, you know." The doctor grinned and reached for the keyboard again.

"_Yeah," I said happily, leaning back against my true love's chest. "I really, really love you, too."_

_THE END_


	19. Epilogue

_At the top of the Eiffel Tower, three men stand looking out over Paris. They are an oddly matched bunch, a tangled hotchpotch of tall and short, pale and dark, young and old, elegant and scruffy. _

_The first man, tall and pale, wearing dark jeans and an _I Heart Paris _t-shirt that sit oddly on his thin frame, looks at the other two and smiles. A keen observer might notice something devilish in that smile, but neither of the men at whom it is directed are particularly observant, and anyway, they're not looking at him. _

"_You know, I hear the wind up here is quite spectacular," he says idly, his voice a deep English drawl. Both men turn to look at him. "Apparently – I don't know if it's true, but apparently if you jump off, the wind comes up at such an angle that it will actually lift you up and put you back on the ledge."_

"_Nawh," the third man, dark-skinned and young, scoffs incredulously in his twisted American whine. "That's gotta be bullshit."_

"_No, it's true," the second man, short and weatherbeaten, cuts in, his Irish accent rough. "I've been up here before. I've done it." The third man shoots him a disbelieving look. "What, you want me to prove it?"_

_The first man begins to look worried. "Oh, no," he backs down. "I'm not sure it's safe."_

_But the second man, stocky and determined, is already climbing the safety-rail. "Nah. I've done this before. It's fine."_

_He stands with his arms outstretched at right angles from his body, tipping horizontally from the rail and falling as though unconscious. Indeed, he only falls for a moment before something seems to catch him and he rises again, up and up, until he lands on his feet on the handrail. He teeters for a moment, then jumps lightly down to join the other two. Both of them are staring at him open-mouthed._

"_I don't believe you," the tall one says, but his tone is one of awe. "It's just a trick. Do it again."_

_The older man smiles complacently. "With pleasure." Once again he climbs onto the barrier and spreads his arms like an angel, letting himself fall forwards. Once again he doesn't get far before something picks him up and lifts him, none too gently, depositing him back on the handrail._

_The youth, this time, is impressed. "Whoa," he breathes. "That's awesome. D'you think I could do that?"_

_The second man grins. "Of course. It's all a matter of having the right technique. How's your balance?"_

_Carefully, kindly, he guides the third man up onto the rail and instructs him on how to hold out his arms. "And then you relax your body, and you just… fall…"_

_Together, their bodies tip; at the last moment, the second man sticks out a leg and steps off the parapet, his body hanging in midair, while the third man falls and falls, and continues to fall. The first man looks up at the second, and snorts. "Bloody Americans," the second one says, the Irish growl gone. The two of them laugh until the youth, screaming, is a dangerous distance from the cobbled Parisian street below. Then the older man dives with superhuman speed to catch him before he hits the ground._

_When he has placed the dark-skinned youth safely on the street, still giggling, he kicks off the ground and soars back to the top of the tower. The curly-haired man is still laughing, clutching his sides and howling with mirth. _

_The second man smiles softly and steps down from the rail, into his arms, while the first holds him tightly and nuzzles into his neck. "You can be delectably evil sometimes, Doctor Watson," he sniggers into the shorter man's hair. _

"_Gee, I wonder where I get that from, Mister Holmes," he replies, smiling fondly. They find their way blindly to each other's mouths and kiss, languid and unhurried. Years later, when they break apart, the shorter one bundles his companion into his arms and rises into the air._

"_Can you go right to the top of the Empire State building?" the first man can be heard to say as they drift away. "We should go there next."_


End file.
